Developed in the course of the Fall 2008 semester at USC as part of the Advanced Games Project class under faculty advisers Mike Zyda, Chris Swain, and Scott Easley, the DS Prototype is a fully playable 45 minute demo of Reflection, created for the Nintendo DS platform.
The DS prototype received a number of honors, including being selected to be displayed at the installment of the EA Endowed Chair, the USC Innovator's Showcase, and a nomination for The Next Great Mobile Game.
Development - Team Reflection (Key Members)
Keith Riley Co - Lead Designer & Co-Creator
Hersh Choksi - Producer
Jeremy Jung - Designer, Artist & Co-Creator
Henry Liu - Designer
Jeff Magers - Lead Engineers
Aadarsh Patel - Engineer
Noel Overkamp - Engineer
Andrew Tio - Lead Artist
Alex Romano - Backgrounds Artist
Gershom Payzer - Effects and UI Artist
IGF Mobile Next Great Mobile Game Nominee Selection, 2008 USC Innovator's Showcase
The Development
Screenshots and Art
At the end of the Spring 2008
semester, the idea to further develop Reflection onto the Nintendo DS
platform was pitched to a committee comprised of faculty advisers and
industry professionals, with the PC Prototype on display to help
explain the mechanics and gameplay. Out of nearly thirty pitches,
Reflection was selected as one of the three projects to be developed as
part of the Advanced Games Project course, a collaborative course
between the School of Cinematic Arts' Interactive Media Division and
the GamePipe Laboratory at Viterbi School of Engineering.
Pre-Production began shortly
after the greenlight and continued through the summer. During this
time, the engineers took the opportunity to familiarize themselves with
the DS hardware and learn the PAlib library. The artists worked closely
with the story designers to begin creating the world of Reflection and
the characters, and the gameplay designers were creating rapid
iterations of their levels using paper prototyping.
Production began in the Fall
2008 semester and continued through November, when it was submitted for
consideration to the IGF Student and IGF Mobile competitions. Team
members came from a variety of disciplines (Design, Engineering, Fine
Arts, Music, Communications, and Business), and worked together to
deliver an enjoyable, playable demo.
The Music
The DS prototype followed an adventurous young girl, Kagami, and a
war-weary guardian, Nishith as they navigated through a cavern. The
music was composed to set up the disparity between the personalities of
these two characters--note the happier, more whimsical sense of the
tracks 'Earthy Cavern' and 'Kagami', heard when the player is
controlling Kagami, versus the darker, more intense tracks like
'Stalkers Appear' and 'Nishith and Shade'. This discrepancy also lends
itself to the progression of the game, with the earlier, brighter music
giving way to the more somber music as the enemy grows more powerful.
Development - Team Reflection (Key Members)