The Games of The Fine Young Capitalists Project

By Julie Morley

[divider] [dropcap]W[/dropcap]e’ve covered The Fine Young Capitalists quite a bit here on Cliqist this past week, interviewing multiple people involved with the project, examining the project, and so on. TFYC have endured a week of controversy and drama surrounding their campaign, especially when their IndieGogo campaign was hacked and altered. However, they’ve recovered, and the campaign is well underway and on track to meeting its funding goal. The focus of The Fine Young Capitalists’ projects are to promote equality in the work force and educate the public about it. Their current project concentrates on women in the gaming industry, especially in the lead positions. In an effort to get more girls interested in the field and comfortable with their ideas, they launched a project welcoming girls from all over to submit game ideas and the top five will be voted on to actually develop their game with the assistance of Columbia-based studio, Autobotika.

These are the five games chosen to be voted on.

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Afterlife Empire

Afterlife Empire is the brainchild of Danielle M., who we’ll be interviewing very soon. Inspired by games like Theme Hospital and Dungeon Keeper, Afterlife Empire is an isometric empire building strategy game relying on the creative use of your ghastly presence to scare as many people as possible. In Afterlife Empire, players take on the role of a the recently deceased and brand spankin’ new ghost who needs to get their feet a little wet in the haunting business.

The ghost begins with just a small shack that eventually builds into a grand spooky mansion, but it’s an awful lot of hard work to get there. Much of Afterlife Empire is based off the notoriety levels your ghost acquires through scaring the living daylights out of those who dare entire their not-so-humble abode. The more heebie jeebies, the bigger the house becomes. But that’s where ghostly creativity comes into play, with the use of traps and some serious strategy players will gain more attention and build up their fame levels to enlarge their home.

However, there must always be a balance, and in this case, it’s overdoing the scare. The goal is for screams not heart attacks and if too many people pass away in your spooky estate, it will be condemned and demolished.

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Furball Fury

Submitted by Michele B. is Furball Fury. Ever wondered what it would be like to be in a cat’s stomach? Perhaps pondered the perilous journey of a hairball and all the character building disasters it encountered in the pit of your feline friend’s digestive tract? In case you haven’t, now you don’t have to ask yourself these life questions – Furball Fury does for you!

Furball Fury is a racing game, intended for mobile devices, set inside your kitty’s tummy. The player is an adventurous hairball, destined to gather any many hairballs as possible within the intestines. But there’s more to this trip of indigestion. Strange creatures have found themselves in a predicament paralleling that of our heroic hairball and soon become your friends.

This game can be played single player but it is designed with score comparison in mind. The goal is to jump through the leader boards and top your friends’ scores, which players increase by gathering an impressive amount of hairballs and digestive debris. But if you’re lacking the competitive streak, Furball Fury has an interesting map editor available. Players can completely customize their own racing maps and share them with friends (or even the entire world).

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Air Rocky

Air Rocky, submitted by Hannah V., is a creative merge of rock, paper, scissors and air hockey for mobile devices. Though you’re playing an app game doesn’t mean you can’t actually communicate and play with others in person, which Air Rocky allows. Air Rocky allows an unlimited amount of players to join, extending the playing field indefinitely.

Everybody is carrying around a mobile device of some sort, whether it’s phone or tablet, and Air Rocky is the ideal game for it. It’s simple to play: one person simply loads up the app and organizes the table they want to play on. Other players can access it by opening the app and seeking it through Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. Afterwards, their phones combined compose the playing table. Players will put their phones together to extend it.

Rock, paper, scissors is one of the main components of Air Rocky’s gameplay. Before the game begins, all players involves are asked to pick one of the three symbols for their personal defense then one of the remaining ones for offense. When the round begins, players are shooting their respective symbols at one another just like an ordinary game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. Once contact is made with an opposing piece, that player freezes temporarily while the opponent is owning the table.

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My Eyes

The submission idea of Sarah D., My Eyes, originally entitled “Through Todd’s Eyes,” allows everyone to view everything from another person’s perspective. It began as a collaborative discussion regarding autism after a small group of teens with Autism had a positive game design learning experience with indie games. This inspired the concept of forcing the player to see things from another perspective which in turn it educational about neurological disorders. Autistic people view the world experience everything differently and have a unique view. Perhaps by people learning more about what the condition and people are like, more will learn further about Autism and various disorders.

My Eyes is a centered around building a world full of interactive stories and engaging characters. It is a world builder that provides a bunch of pre-created characters, props, environments, etc. for players to put together. But for those who’re interested, they can create the assets themselves as well. With these tools, players craft a world full of quirky characters will interesting personalities, all with disorders, anxieties, and conditions. Once these are put together, you’ve created a new perspective for people to try.

Once the story is crafted, players can upload them online for people to play.

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Lux

Lux, created by Lucy L., is a platformer game filled with puzzles that rely on interaction with light to move through. The player plays as Alabaster, who has a genius understanding of light manipulation. On each level, Alabaster is faced with some sort of obstacle that cannot be moved without the use of light. Each lever offers multiple ways for Alabaster to bend light and rely on reflections to continue pressing on in the underworld. All light will be manipulated to affect various interactable objects within the environment to complete the puzzle.

In certain cases, it will be demanded of the player to combine lights to generate colors for specific puzzles.

However, things are a bit more difficult than that. Light will react differently to whatever material it hits and there are three options. Certain ones reflect, others bend and reflect, whilst some will scatter the light altogether. Players must strategize how they intend to bend the light meticulously for every puzzle they face and in some cases they could be stumped on it for a while.

[divider] [dropcap]A[/dropcap]ll these ladies have contributed some beautiful game ideas that would seem to make for some great games. We will find out the game design backers picked by the end of the IndieGogo campaign on September 26, 2014.  Be sure to head over to the Fine Young Capitalists voting page to make your voice heard regarding which game you’d like to see made.

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[facebook][tweet][Google][pinterest][follow id=”Cliqist” size=”large” count=”true” ] [author image=”http://cliqist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/julie.jpg” ]Julie Morley is a freelance writer and comic artist from Spring, Texas. She attended the Academy of Art University for two years, studying Animation and Illustration. Whilst here, she learned about writing comic scripts, storyboards, and general storytelling.  Since leaving college, she has been working on personal comic projects, stories, and illustrations. She aspires to release a self published comic within two years. For the majority of her life, she has been playing console games, typically being third-person shooters and sandboxes. Her favorite game of existence is Dark Cloud II (Dark Chronicle) and her favorite Indie game is Gone Home.[/author]