Poets often use many words, to say a simple thing. It takes thought and time and rhyme, to make a poet sing.
Fly me to the moon
On June 20, 2021, the first GAMEHACK 2021 hosted by rct AI came to a successful conclusion.
After a 48-hour battle with nearly 100 game developers, a total of 13 distinctive games were born in the small venue.
In these games, some focus on narrative, using the game to show a touching story hidden in the developer’s heart; some are more mystery, in a slightly creepy atmosphere, to restore a warm “HOME” theme; some games focus on the relationship between people and the world, trying to explore a beautiful but ethereal vision; and some even difficult to be “defined” as a game — because in terms of gameplay, it provides an experience is just too special.
But all the same, it took a lot of hard work for everyone involved to conceive and create a game from scratch in 48 hours. Even at 4:00 a.m., when it was dawn, many people could still be found hunched over their computers.
“Poets often use a tangled and complex language to tell a simple story.
How much time and rhythmic contemplation is required in it before the poem becomes one?”
Just like in the Western stories, people go through trials and tribulations and pray carefully to welcome the Son of God who comes down to earth.
At the start of GAMEHACK 2021, it was predicted that the next 48 hours would probably be one of the most memorable 48 hours of many participants’ lives.
Our assessment, as first-hand witnesses of the race, is that it was.
The final result was a pleasant surprise: although many people questioned rct AI before GAMEHACK 2021, saying that it could never make a good game in just 48 hours. But for rct AI, the last thing we are afraid of is to break people’s prejudices with factual results.
The theme of the competition was HOME.
After combining the language generation models provided by rct AI, many participants were algorithmically stimulated and inspired to make many excellent works that even we had not envisioned.
Among them, there are many projects that are worthy of continuous iteration and deep optimization, and have the potential to become another hit in the sense of commercialization or communication.
We at rct AI are looking forward to sharing with you these creative and excellent game projects, and we can’t wait to spread the joy to you.
Let me play among the stars
Homeward
Game Type: Plot-oriented puzzle
Core gameplay: Puzzle adventure, restoring the truth of the story by piecing together bits and pieces of details
Team members: Jinkun Chen (art), Qilin Li (art), Weicheng Gao (planning/programming), Zhiyong Duan (programming)
Introduction:
A little girl woke up in an empty home, mom and dad are gone, so she walks around their home looking through items trying to collect clues of where they’ve gone. Players through their own perspective piece together a variety of details for the little girl to restore the truth of the story.
“The concept of home itself is cozy for me, so I want the final ending of my game to also give a cozy feeling.”
“But usually we add conflict to the plot to add drama to the story. So I incorporated elements of the pandemic in there to tell the story of an otherwise cozy family that is affected by the pandemic and where it will go.”
Home & Cat
Game Type: 2D horizontal jumping + cultivation game
Core gameplay: wander around the big map looking for people to send cats out; after completing a certain amount of dispatches, you can unlock the next stage and have new conversations with cats
Team members: Boni (program), Enduro (program), Wu Jiamata (sound), Zhang Hong (art), Xuan (planning), Morty (program), Ms. Sun Yuxi (art/planning)
Introduction:
In a future cyberpunk world, the down-on-his-luck protagonist stumbles upon a long-extinct creature called a “cat” and is attracted by its cute appearance at first sight and brings it home.
As the cat grows, more and more kittens will be born, so the main character, who has been melted by the cat, decides to give the kittens to others, to pass on the happiness in his hands, and to create the warmth of “home” for more people in the cold Cyber world. Whenever he returns home, the main character can have various conversations with the cat through a translator, creating a real feeling of mutual companionship. Just like the cats in real life.
The cat’s daily conversation is provided by the language generation model of rct AI, players can input any text, and the cat will generate different conversations according to what the player says. This not only satisfies the players’ need for “companionship”, but also increases the players’ motivation to “share” and pass on their happiness.
LISA : Living In Space of Anything
Game Type: 3D Instant Adventure
Core gameplay: Move LISA with the mouse, observe and solve the puzzles set in the room, collect the necessary props, and accept a new challenge layer after layer
Introduction:
Players will follow the little robot LISA perspective, control LISA in the room she used to live in a big adventure, in addition to 3D scenes of exploration game flow, but also contain some 2D scenes of additional mini-games.
“LISA is a small robot with intelligence, and when she wakes up and loses track of that person in this room that was once so familiar, can this room, which consists of everything related to HOME, still be called HOME?”
“We believe time and again that a true home is a place where emotions come together. Being with people, being with your closest ones, whatever life is made up of, wherever your loved ones are, is what makes it home. Help LISA get out of here and back to HER.”
The game uses the language generation model provided by rct AI to continue the description of the setting of the backstory of LISA, and after some manual rewriting, it forms a more complete worldview framework now. The production team of LISA consisted of a group of college students who found little difficulty in the use of the model itself.
Crab Crib
Game Type: 2D platform jumping & puzzle solving
Core gameplay: By moving, jumping, diving, picking up and other actions, avoiding traps, using different functions of the shell props, picking up a total of 4 giant shells in the map to achieve the goal of passing the game, while ensuring survival as much as possible
Team members: Fivero (planning/programming/art), HUDD (planning/programming/sound), LR (planning/programming/demo)
Introduction:
“Starting from the theme of ‘HOME’, we didn’t want to fall into the most straightforward cozy bridge of ‘home’, but tried to find other angles that could have a connection with ‘HOME ‘ and came up with snails and hermit crabs, two animals that carry ‘home’ around with them.”
“The hermit crab’s habit of constantly changing its shell is very suitable for designing the game’s mechanics, so there is the core mechanic of the game to change shells. And based on the characteristic that the shell is the hermit crab’s home, we introduced the concept of ‘going home’ and added the mechanism of teleportation to make the game more difficult and interesting again, and designed the relevant levels based on this mechanism.”
Homecoming
Game type: 2D horizontal version of the mobile + text plot
Core gameplay: plot interactive gameplay, through the level of continuous dialogue to witness all kinds of life
Introduction:
“On the way home before the Spring Festival, after everyone has been busy for a whole year, they are finally going home, but everyone’s mood is different. There are people who have not gone home for years after quarreling with their families and this time decided to go home to face their parents; there are also spirited college students who are full of happiness to return home; there are also journalists who decided not to go home and interview passersby during the Spring Festival …… and these AI NPCs who enjoy chatting before the train arrives and feel the atmosphere of going home is this game’s core gameplay.”
As a game that focuses on plot performance, the language generation model provided by rct AI plays an active role in it. By automatically generating the dialogue plot, the development time is shortened and the developer has more energy to devote to the art and optimization of the game.
The Way Back Home during Covid
Game Type: Dialogue-based Rougelite
Core gameplay: Influence the state of the passengers on the plane through conversations with the god of dreams; dodge infected passengers on the plane and get home safely
Introduction:
“During the pandemic, all the people who were overseas wanted to go home by air. Some of them have been infected with the virus but they don’t know it, and some of them know that they have been infected but still want to go home. Whatever their reason for stepping on this plane, you are on it. What do you have to do to hide from them without knowing who has the virus and to finally set foot safely in your homeland?”
The language generation model provided by the game using rct AI is the core gameplay system of this game. The game is divided into a total of two stages.
One, the player is in a dream, inputting text to communicate with the dream god in real time, and using the final communication process to influence the next scenario map and difficulty (for example, if the dialogue mentions “masks”, more people on the plane will wear masks next).
Second, the dream is over, and the player comes to the plane, the player through the screen of the state of different characters, headphones heard coughing, to constantly adjust their position on the plane, away from the passengers who have been infected, and finally let themselves safely home.
The game will eventually use the “health code” to indicate whether the player wins, if the health code is red means failure.
Memories of Homepoddy
Game Type: LBS AR puzzle handheld game
Core gameplay: Explore real scenes through Homepoddy’s guidance, collect objects in real scenes that are emotionally connected to Homepoddy, and listen to her stories of what happened.
Team members: Xie Mingxuan (planning/art/programming), Ma Zheng (sound effects)
Introduction:
“The difference between House and Home in architecture is that House ( residence ) is the type of function for which the space is designed, Home ( home ) is the emotional identity that comes from the connections that people make in that space. So does the experience of ‘home’ in a game space (or cyberspace, metaverse, etc.) focus on the connection between players and NPCs and other players?”
This AI+AR virtual human-based real-space demystification game attempts to explore the emotional impact of future AI virtual humans on humans.”
For the game “Memories of Homepoddy”, her “memory” is provided by the language generation model provided by rct AI. For creator Xie Mingxuan, the AI continued to write many of his unexpected stories, providing inspiration for the final product.
The Way
Game type: horizontal board platform jumping puzzle gameplay
Core gameplay: control the guide dog to complete layers of decryption levels, blind elderly people and guide dogs collaborate with each other to overcome the difficulties in the road
Team members: Yu Han (main planner/technical director) Zheng Lixing (main program) Wu Jiawei (UI program) Lin Qihan (original artist) Zhan Yan (technical art/animator) Kong Li Rong (soundtrack/sound effects)
Introduction:
The game character is set as a blind old man and his guide dog, the blind man faces all kinds of obstacles along the way and is at a loss, he can only rely on the guide dog to guide him to find the way home.
“For the design of the background, the organizer rct AI came up with: ‘What you think is HOME, that’s what it means.’ So when setting the background, we wanted to take the journey of guiding players to think about ‘what is HOME’ as our theme.”
Although the general direction from the background is to bring the elderly home, the overall emphasis lies in the thinking and feeling on the way, so the first envisaged a number of small levels, changed to a long level design scheme, can make the experience more emphasis on the process, rather than the results.
Eventually, the theme of “The Way” was established according to the overall tone, and the logo of the game cover is also based on Braille, designed in the style of “Tou”, the Chinese character of The Way. I hope players can find their own “HOME” on the way to such a game.”
Home from Work
Game Type: 2D vertical dodge action game
Core gameplay: reply to the boss’s message on the phone while dodging the puddles formed by the heavy rain and insist on going through the whole process to return home
Introduction:
“The protagonist is an office worker who was often forced to work overtime. On this day, he worked until 11 o’clock and finally got off work, it was raining heavily and the subway stopped running already. Suddenly the boss, who was drunk at this time, sent out a bunch of bizarre work requests by text, forcing the protagonist to deal with them.”
“Relieved that even though the night is late but the wife and children at home are still worried about the unreturned, they refused to rest early, just hoping that they can welcome him home safely. Home is the harbor that can shelter from the wind and rain, and the family can make the tired heart full of energy.”
The game attaches great importance to the application of music, with the rise and fall of BGM, players will experience the complete anxiety-soothing-pleasant psychological process in the game, and as they get closer to home, the mood will become more and more pleasant. With the “Pathos Sonata Chapter 2” and three rain sound clips together, it plays a good narrative role.
In addition, the game style also imitates the style of children’s illustrations, so that the whole process looks like a father telling stories of his experience coming home through a picture book to his children.
Dumplings
Game Type: Scene light decryption
Core gameplay: find the right path for the game by talking to different NPCs
Introduction:
“The story takes place in a fourth-tier mineral resource city in the north, which is gradually losing its vitality as the minerals are depleted. At dusk, our main character, Granny, suddenly appears in a strange courtyard. She doesn’t know why she is here, only that her son is going to a distant city to study. The custom in the north is ‘dumplings on the train and noodles off the train’, and she wants to make a delicious dumpling for her son.”
After experiencing the complete story, players will find that the main character, Granny, turns out to be suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and her memory is stuck in the past. The changes in the city and the development of the society make this old person who lives in the past feel at a loss. She wants to give her family a meal of dumplings back home, only to finally find that her family is no longer with her.
“In her search for the market, she gradually discovers that she is trapped in time.”
ele The Lost Elephant
Game type: 2D horizontal axis action puzzle
Core gameplay: By controlling the movement of the elephant, jumping, rolling trunk and other actions, interacting with the content of the game scene, collecting various types of puzzle elements, cracking the puzzle and successfully passing the level
Introduction:
“The game is inspired by the news of the ‘broken trunk family’ elephant herd in Xishuangbanna, which is currently on fire all over the Internet, leaving their homeland and migrating all the way to the north. Overall it’s a very good theme.”
“In terms of plot design, our protagonist is a baby elephant named ele. ele starts from his habitat and goes through three levels, which are: wisely crossing the dangerous beach, drunkenly fighting the evil thief, and searching for the elephant mother for thousands of miles. In the process of adventure, he grows up and finally reaches his mother.”
“Product positioning, the main character of this story theme for the elephant, is more attractive to school-age children. Therefore, in terms of product art style, the style of origami is used, which is closer to the psychology of children and more easily accepted.”
Last but not least
As the organizer and witness of this event, from the viewpoint of rct AI, the game creators are never as mysterious as they are said to be. They are just a group of young, enthusiastic, energetic, ambitious and ordinary people.
We want to connect with more creators and use our AI content generation tools to accelerate the birth of more great work when creators run out of inspiration and exhaustion. At the same time, we also want to communicate our beliefs to everyone and recruit more partners to “slay the dragon” together.
In his post-competition speech, rct AI CTO Zhang Yan said:
“We believe that technology changes the world. We would like to invite all partners who are interested in game development and game technology and want to use technology to create the future with their own hands.”
All of this is rct AI’s way of proving one thing to creators who are looking up at the stars.
The universe will always be flickering in distance,
you are never alone at night.
