Dare 2010: Grimnir Games on its fatally funny Death Inc for PSP

As part of the Dare to be Digital student game development competition being held at University of Abertay Dundee, we hooked up with those teams working on games for portable devices.

Peter Nettleship is the leader of Sheffield Hallam University team Grimnir Games, which developed Death Inc. on PSP.

Peter Nettleship: We wanted to make a game for the PSP Minis and so researched which games were currently on the market. We also looked into which game mechanics worked well on the PSP and what could be implemented within a 10 week development period.

Taking inspiration from traditional platform games such as Sonic and Mario, as well as modern day platformers like LittleBigPlanet, we decided we wanted to create a puzzle platformer in a 2.5D environment.

The original idea was to play as a grim reaper collecting souls but having looked at age ratings and previous Dares we decided we wanted to market the game at a younger audience. This meant studying media aimed at the 7+ age range, such as the Horrible Histories book series and the Looney Toons cartoons. We wanted to use such humour, and to emphasise it, we wanted a cartoony art style that would appeal to young people.

Having recently completed our degrees, we wanted to apply our skills as a team and gain experience on console architecture. Our university Sheffield Hallam University has an educational development licence with Sony to develop on the PSP. Dare to be Digital provides us with the opportunity to spend time on the platform that we would not have had over the summer.

With the academic licence, Sony offered us support in the way of forums, a direct contact to technical support, and training sessions for both art and programming. It has also allowed us to take advantage of the official documentation and libraries to provide a realistic development experience.

We knew we would encounter different development problems due to the constraints of the PSP compared to the other platforms in terms of technical specifications.

Due to this we decided to create a game that was fun to play but with simple mechanics. We used vibrant, bold colours and a simplistic yet appealing art style to play to the strengths of the PSP and to the humour of the game. This was predominantly conveyed through the various character animations that were produced, which amplified the comedic elements while utilising the available screen space.

Also by keeping the gameplay 2D, we simplified the core game mechanics, thus avoiding the risk of any over complication. These mechanics also translate well to games developed on portable devices.

Adapting to the constraints of new hardware on both the programming and art side of development. We have encountered a number of technicalities that we were not anticipating and solving these has been beneficial in extending our knowledge of the hardware and in our own personal experiences.

When we applied to the competition there were no game engines readily available for the PSP. Therefore we decided to create our own, minimising any advantages other teams developing with existing commercial or open source game engines might have.

Using our engine as a basis for the game, we're proud that we've created a fully working prototype, in which the artists and programmers have worked together within the constraints of the hardware to create something that is fun to play and adheres to our original ideas.

If funding became available, we would be looking to take this project further and possibly release it as a PSP Mini.

If we can take this project further as a team then we will. Otherwise we plan to apply for entry positions within the games industry.

You can find out more about Death Inc. here, or check out the video below.

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