Powerfulbones Super Sleuth Game

THE CHALLENGE

Switchblade Media came to us with with great characters, a healthy and positive message and an original concept for an educational Flash game. The goal of the project was to promote calcium rich foods and healthy bone building activities to pre-teen kids. They were looking for a group to program the ActionScript, create appropriate sound effects, and to write music that was original and dynamic.

THE SOLUTION

Having never seen a game this rich with detail and levels of action done in Flash before we began by mapping and planning out all aspects of the playability. From those basic outlines we created multiple demos of each kind of interaction (character movement, searching locations, scrolling backgrounds). Those demos helped us finalize every action and reaction in the entire game. We also worked to create sound effects that were fun and cartoonish but that also helped the player understand the environment of the game. The music went through a number of revisions, each better than the previous, until finally hitting upon a bright, funky, toe-tapping song.

Features:

• Three playable heroes, each with their own voice and animations
• Controls to make the hero run, jump, climb, search, and collect items
• Two antagonistic "critters", a squirrel and a lizard who try to make the hero drop their items and temporarily "daze" them
• A huge horizontally and vertically scrolling world with many areas to explore
• 30 scavenger hunt items, each with their own animation
• 35 locations in which the items randomly appear each new game
• Three scavenger hunt missions given to the hero by their friends, a Basketball game, Cheese wrap picnic, and a Dance party.
• Unique animated cut-scenes that play after the hero completes each mission.
• A backpack inventory system with space for 15 items
• Music that dynamically cross fades between different themes during the game

Super Sleuth