GGJ 2025 – The Bubblemancer
The game is about a bubble wizard who walks near a castle haunted by monsters (we didn’t really think about the plot, I am improvising). The real game is an endless runner where the player shoots at monsters (with a whopping 2 frames of animation!) by aiming with the mouse and controlling the strength of the shot, which must match the color of the monster, with his or her own voice.
Even though the gameplay is chaotic at the current state of the game, the art I worked on was very interesting and a first for me. I had never tried my hand at drawing before (I used an ipad pro 2022 as a drawing tablet through the easy canvas software) and I must say it was very fun and satisfying. The effect I started from is the outline covering most mesh edges. This was achieved through a mix of substance painter smart masks and hand drawing. The few frames of animation are also an experiment that I think is successful for this game, especially the exploding bubbles were a lot of fun.
Vegetation meshes were initially downloaded from sketchfab for time reasons (link in description) and heavily edited on blender to optimize geometry and prepare uvs for texturing. Following the outline effect, I worked on the details on the different meshes (such as grass, rocks, stone, trees, and terrain). The final effect on Unity was surprisingly consistent, thanks largely to the choice of contextualizing everything as if it was a simple drawing on squared paper.
I am very satisfied with the work done, despite the fact that these are simple elements and very quick techniques, I got to experience something I knew only in theory and it turned out to be very nice.
Credits:
Federico Dell’Aquila – coding
Gabriele Ballicu – coding
Walter VItaletti (me!) – art
GGJ 2024 – How To Print A Joke
So… The theme for this year was ‘Make me laugh’. Since we wanted to test VR for a game jam for a long time, and we have a broken sense of humour, we made this. How to Print a Joke is a game about fixing a printer with the help of customer support (voice acting by Gabriele) and with surreal elements. All the environment is static and baked, since we did not have time for optimization, and as a result, the performance was OK with PCVR and not so OK on the Quest 3. However, we managed to finish the game on time with few interactions to justify the narration.
Credits:
Emanuele Bagnarola – Code
Federico Dell’aquila – Code
Gabriele Ballicu – Sound
Walter Vitaletti – Art
VRoller – Lazio Innova 2023
We created virtual reality (VR) game that let the user experience the Teolo’s track, a real downhill circuit that has hosted international championships in Italy. In order to move around and pick up speed, the game makes use of body controls including leaning, couching, and swinging arms.
Federico Dell’Aquila – Programmer
Gabriele Ballicu – Sound
Walter Vitaletti – 3D Artist
GGJ 2023 – On the Roots
On The Roots is a local multiplayer game created for the 2023 Global Game Jam. The main theme was “roots”, which we obviously translated into the real roots that can be found in the streets of Rome. The PSX retro game effect was created with a set of VFX included in a PSX render pipeline for Unity.
Nota:
Per gli intenditori ci siamo ispirati alla Cristoforo Colombo per andare verso Ostia Lido. Il mio inferno personale.
Credits:
Emanuele Bagnarola – Code
Federico Dell’aquila – Code
Gabriele Ballicu – Sound
Walter Vitaletti – Art