Neumont Game Studio Presents: Rags to Liches
RAGS TO LICHES
Sometimes we all just want a little peace and quiet …
Begin your journey as Raemond, a farmer, looking for a quiet place to settle, which sounds like a simple task. But in this world, your enemies refuse to let you live peacefully. This is not your typical storyline, you’re not fighting off demons and dragons, there is no ‘save the princess’ dialogue, or winning the war. And just when you begin to advance, the game throws you a curveball! Goodbye farmer character, hello Liches. You are now a lich in the game and everything just got harder…
Neumont Game Studio
As part of Neumont’s Game Studio, a team of five students merged their skills to conceive and create the action-filled game: Rags to Liches. A small, third-person, action, tower defense game that entails an adventure to find peace. You must battle through waves and waves of enemies in order to protect yourself and Neuman, your beloved llama. (It wouldn’t be a Neumont game if there weren’t any llamas, obviously!)
HOW IT’S MADE
On average, modern PC or console games take anywhere from three to five years to be developed. These five students tackled this development project in a matter of 10 weeks.
What does it take to develop a game in a short amount of time? Coding, coding, and more coding. From creating an idea to mapping out the game, and in between testing every two weeks to maintain quality between builds, these students had a lot to accomplish.
OVERCOMING OBSTACLES
Some of the obstacles in creating Rags to Liches included tackling animation, including idle animation. The player will notice the detailed movement in Raemond’s cloak, the jumping motions from Neuman, and even the weaponry movement. The enemies are AI generated and travel in all directions testing your defense strategies to the max.
It’s the little details that take this game to the next level. Inventory, level design, and its map building are extremely well done. Players have the ability to change screen resolution and graphic settings which are details that usually don’t receive a lot of attention when developed quickly. When playing in high quality mode, players will notice characters are given shadow effects.
Just like the game, there were many challenges throughout its development. A recurring problem that the team faced involved the AI enemies. The paths are nodes, therefore an enemy moves from one node to another node. Once an enemy detects you, the player, they disconnect from the node system to charge. The problem was getting the enemies back to a node path after seeing you. By using tools built into unity and the knowledge gained at Neumont, they were able to make the AI enemies revert back to their path.
An amazing job well done by Neumont Game Studios.
PEER REVIEWS
@tylerobo wrote, “story just could not stop making me laugh. Nothing is explained and I LOVE it…”
@Night from Steam says, “make a 2nd game. This one was fire!” And @dockbkblbobo rates it as a “peak game.”
“Definitely enjoyed watching our boy go from a farmer to a geared out bad dude, but man being a lich sucks the lich stages were miserable, but the game is a blast for a free to play I love that it has a story and that we get to watch our character progress. It's pretty bare bones in way of tower defense mechanics, but it's still cool to be able to slaughter waves of enemies. I wish the lich form had more unholy abilities or towers, but instead you turn from a sword wielding blender to a lethargic victim. Definitely recommend though it's free to play and worth the time.” - @TheFluffyPanda
Play Rags to Liches for FREE on Steam.