Local video game wins honors

• By MICHAEL FARRAR
• Special to 2theadvocate.com
• Published: Jun 20, 2008 - UPDATED: 2:15 p.m.

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What goes into a creating a computer video game? Joshua Wascom and Nicholas Scheurich can tell you, since they were on the team that made the adventure game "Aristeia." The two took part in a computer game design course offered through LSU where they created the game and took top honors in a design competition.

As an LSU student in computer science, Wascom brought his expanding knowledge of high-tech wizardry to the game-making process, but he was quick to give partner Scheurich credit for his contribution to the effort.

"He was the primary artist. I think he probably did as much work as I did. So, most of the actual visual design was his work, where as I did most of the under-the-hood coding work and game play design," Wascom said.

Scheurich, a Baton Rouge Web developer, agreed and felt that together their skills made “Aristeia” a stronger game.

"I come from a traditional art background, and then I got into computers after the fact. So, that kind of lends itself well to stuff like Web design and video game design where you can kind of meld those two media," Scheurich said.

“Aristeia” is a platform-style game in which players progress from level to level by meeting new challenges to survive and achieve each level's task.

"It's mostly about solving puzzles through the abilities of the players,” Wascom explained. “There are some elements that are more action-oriented where it's obvious what you have to do, but you must have the timing and coordination."

The game was unanimously judged to be the best among the design teams of both the LSU and University of Illinois at Chicago class projects competing for the interclass video game honor.

When Scheurich and Wascom demonstrated their game, it reminded me of vintage games like “Joust” or “Super Mario Brothers.” It turns out that this was exactly what they intended. “Aristeia” is basically a two-dimensional game reminiscent of the great video games of the past.

"I think that it was kind of refreshing to a lot of people, because the game was just fun to pick up and play," Scheurich said. "It doesn't look like the most impressive thing out there with big budget Hollywood effects. It's just a fun game to play."

Why did they go retro? Part of the reason was a practical consideration of time. They had only one semester to finish the game as part of the LSU course. Even though team member Josh Mayer handled game sound and Wii remotes, and Devin Ourso made some contributions as part of the student team, one semester is a tough deadline for game creation. Going with a 2-D design simplified the work load.

Scheurich suspects that their two-dimensional design choice also distinguished their game from others in the competition.

"I think we were the only team that did a 2-D game,” Scheurich said. “Everybody else did a 3-D game, trying to incorporate a lot of 3-D elements and make it a 3-D world. We kind of took a step back. We went old school -- 2-D."