Nan Turismo
Nan Turismo is a 4 player competitive arena game with a comedic twist. Players need to keep their nan away from harm whilst dealing as much damage as possible to the other nans in the arena. At the end of the game players are shown which nans took the most damage and the player who took the least wins.
During my 3rd year I was invited to pick and lead 5 other students to travel to London and take part in the first EGX Jam representing UCLAN. The game jam was just like a Global Game Jam where each team needed to create a game over 48 hours. Post EGX Jam, the team and I continued to work on the project for a few weeks and we showcased it at the Northwest Playtesters and Manchester Gamers Unite events. We also won the The Great Northern Creative Expo 2019 award for our work on the project.
Development Info
Project: EGX Student Jam
Start Date: October 2019
Team Size: 6
Role: Group Lead, 3D Artist, Producer
Project Length: 48 Hours (Jam), 8 Weeks (Continued)
Software Used: Unreal Engine 4, Maya, Zbrush, Substance Painter/Designer, Photoshop
Role/Responsibilities
For this project I was responsible for managing the time of 5 other students to get transported down to London, booked into accommodation and registered at the event hall for this game jam.
We were there to compete with teams of students from other universities, all of which of the others were from in and around London. For this jam I was solely focused on creating 3D assets for the team, primarily creating the characters and mobility scooters and the environmental set pieces.
We were also there to interact with industry professionals that were walking around our jam site in addition to the expo hall. We had great discussions with a variety of developers who were all impressed at the speed we were throwing this game together.
After the game jam we spent 8 weeks moving from deadline to deadline to improve and refine the game for different expos we were invited to attend until Covid happened and put a stop to our plans.
What Went Right
We locked in our goal for “Sports That Shouldn’t Exist” fairly quickly, opting to go and check into our hotel while we discussed the theme instead of sitting around to talk and checking in when we were exhausted.
We kept the scope very manageable with room to expand if we met the scope early.
The game was playable from a very early stage thanks to building the game in Unreal. The other teams that were using Unity weren’t able to start testing their games until much later in the day.
The steady progression of the game as we worked on it from event to event was great to see.
We had public playtests of this game which people enjoyed, especially in groups which was a driving force for us continuing work on this game.
What Went Wrong
We weren’t able to capture as good a video as we would have liked for the presentation at the end of the game jam.
The event hosts pivoted from there being a winner to “everyone is a winner” mid presentation which annoyed the team as we thought we had a great chance at claiming the win.
COVID stopped the continuation of this project after we’d developed it for several events.
What I Learned
I learned how to handle dealing with setbacks as a team rather than as an individual. The team was there for each other for every stage of development and it felt like less of a burden.
Working better with multiple disciplines, I learned more about specific pipelines that the others who were more specialised in those fields needed to bring the project to life.
Used as a visual indicator for the amount of damage taken
