University of Huddersfield Computer Games

Huddersfields Black Banshee team, made up of Canalside studio‘s Helen Fricker, Ben Blakemore and Chris White won Best Art for their game Squniverse at X48 in Birmingham.

X48 is a marathon gamecamp where students and indie developers use Microsoft’s XNA Game Studio 3.0 to create a game in less than 48 hours.

I went to chat to the team for some insight into the game.

Squniverse (skew-ne-verse) is a unique platform adventure puzzle game. It’s quick, fun and arcadey with a cartoony art style, which really complements the game.

You play as an explorer in a strange world looking for the ends of the universe. Each planet acts a as level, each containing Helium veins, which you must mine to fuel your balloon. This balloon allows you to fly to each new planet. Beware of the ‘SPACE SQUIRRELS’ as they are protecting the Helium on each planet and they will even sacrifice their nuts just to try and stop you.

The team added “This game idea came about quite slowly, as we didn’t really get any main idea pinned down until 6 hours into the event! We sat down and drew out the whole game again, keeping one main element from the original game plan – moving from planet to planet, we all agreed this was a good way to go. There was something missing though; how would the game be a challenge?!! – Easy …Space squirrels!… after a lot of planning we got straight back to the making of it! It was a very tiring experience, but was worth it”.

*Gallery removed temporarily*