Inertia
Overview
Inertia is zero-gravity platformer designed to throw off the player's sense of what is up and down. The game takes place in a run-down Russian cosmonaut training facility and is centered around maneuvering challenges around obstacles such as fire and electricity.
Inertia was built over the course of four months with a team of five to seven people, and was our first foray into a full 3D game production.
I acted as Lead Designer, Producer, and Level Designer.
The opening to the first level
Players can jump from platform to platform
Low budget star simulations
First look at fire
Fire kills instantly, requiring careful maneuvering
A twisting level
Objectives are required to progress
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The original concept for the game was inspired by the book Ender's Game.
In the book, there is a zero-gravity combat chamber in which squadrons of boys compete against each other as part of their training. Ender's tactical genius helps his team become unbeatable, and one of his core teachings to his teammates was to cast aside previously held notions of which direction "down" should be.
We wanted to throw players into a similar situation of discombobulation in a zero-gravity environment and force them to give up their sense of down.
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The game was developed in our second Production class, lasting four months. It was the first time any of us on the team had worked on a project for this length.
Part of the class was using a SCRUM-based agile development cycle. With the original team of five, we started by iterating through several renditions of our original concept. It took us several weeks to finally arrive on the concept of being a trainee in a poorly-maintained, and not very safe, cosmonaut training course.
Halfway through the development cycle, we gained two team members, and used the extra man (and woman) hours to implement a complete voiceover script. The whole process was a challenge, and gave every member of the team great experience.
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Taylor Hadden — Lead Game Designer, Producer, Level Designer
Nicole Thayer — Writier
Ethan Hiley — Lead Artist, Voice Actor
Ryan Rubin — Artist
Brian Arsenault — Programmer
Nick Collins — Programmer
Kyle Goodman — Programmer
Also featuring:
Marguerite Dibble — Voice Actor