Introducing Team RedLight and their student game: Montezumania

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Sean Winchester, project manager of Team RedLight led his team of six to produce a very interesting, and visually impressive game. Alex Rude, lead artist worked with a team of three artists, including Sean and himself, and Gregor Czaykowski. The three programmers worked on making the game fun to play; Andrew McArthur was the Lead Programmer, Benjamin Maher was both a programmer and the Lead Designer, and Liam de Koster-Kjaer focused solely on the programming.

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Inspired by Aztec art and war-hunge, Montezumania is a visually impressive game. It features battles atop floating platforms against ferocious Aztec guardians. The guardians weigh down the platforms they stand on and if a platform reached its weight threshold, it sinks. To counter the sacrificial behaviour, the player is armed a number of different attacks that can push the enemies off the platforms.

The fun comes from the player's obsession to always improve on his/her high-score. To achieve this on sinking platforms, players have to jump from one platform to another, and try to push enemies off them so the weight threshold isn't reached. The more enemies you kill, the more enemies spawn on the platforms.

To be successful at this game, a player needs to demonstrate good strategy, accuracy skills and fast reactions.

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Working on Montezumania did not only allow students to create a successful title, but it brought artists and programmers together for the very first time on a larger scale project and enabled them to work on skills as essential as the technical ones they have developed throughout the year: communication, work ethics, and understanding.

Gregor Czaykowski, artist on the game says on this, "Montezumania was a great learning experience for me; not only art-wise but also in a communicative way. It was the first proper group project I have been in and I was able to speak my mind and suggest ideas to the team, and learn how to do so in a way that (most of them) get implemented as well."

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