Satan Sam.co.uk

Wake is a game I’ve been working on now for 6 months. Over the summer I caught the remake of the Poseidon Adventure, as poor as that film was compared to the original it brought back memories of some classic Amiga games involving a steadily increasing water level. Thunderbirds had such a level, set in an underwater base if I recall, but this was at an age where I had no clue about missions in games. Sink or Swim was similar but took on a Lemmings style of gameplay, where the player had to rescue scientists.

The rising water mechanic always interested me. It’s similar to a zombie style of game where something bad is slowly approaching the player. It’s up to them to provide their own path to safety, and the same is true here.

In Wake the water level is constantly rising at different speeds depending on difficulty. Various events will raise the players score such as collecting things, escaping the ship quickly, not fainting etc. This score can then be uploaded to the big super global highscore table. There are achievements and all that modern stuff too. Visually I threw everything I could at it and tried to create an evolving atmosphere.

The player is up against obstacles but they wont kill the player, they just knock the little engineer out until the icy waters wake him up again. The only way the player can die is by drowning. Death isn’t the point in this game.

Wake will be out in the coming weeks after more testing, optimising and additional artwork.

A rolling demo can be downloaded now, which also contains some promotional art material and desktop images. Bear in mind that this is the full game, but as a rolling demo it just picks random rooms and the camera pans through them… another throw back to the Amiga days. Be sure to check the real site too!