Rudely awakened after 3,000 years of sleep, Tut, a half-mummified loveable ball of bandages, has only one thought on his mind – escaping his temple and exacting his revenge on those who interrupted his beauty slumber.
This is the premise of Tangled Tut, a new mobile phone game designed by a young Maltese team that is set to hit iPhone and Android applications in January.
Tut has no legs, so he manoeuvres through the temple by swinging out his bandages and flinging himself between them. He is joined by Madu, a crazy bat who often gets him into very sticky situations.
The game is the first Maltese project to be launched on Kickstarter, an online platform used for raising funds to support innovative creative projects. It will be rolled out today.
According to Mark Flores Martin, the 26-year-old creator of Tangled Tut, total costs of developing and producing the game run into tens of thousands of euros, including licence fees to operate sophisticated game creation systems, access to development portals and hundreds of hours spent by the young team creating an entire game from scratch.
The six dedicated people who make up the team have spent months working tirelessly for free, in the hope that Tangled Tut will be the first of many more games produced by a Maltese company, which Mr Flores Martin christened Pencil Pig.
“The name has prompted a couple of giggles,” the game developer laughed. “But we’re a game company, it’s all supposed to be fun. I always wanted the word ‘pig’ in it. I don’t know why, probably it’s because I love food so much.”
Two weeks ago, Mr Flores Martin took the decision to quit his full-time job as a teacher to focus solely on the game.
The other five – game programmer Mario Spiteri, composer Adrian Vella, public relations officer Josh O’Cock, visual effects artist Jonathan Caruana and background artist Luca Pantellaro – currently work on the game while juggling with their own full-time jobs.
What were the biggest challenges? “It’s actually finding people to join the venture. There are not many people you can hire. Game development is a very new area in Malta. The University course only started two years ago.”
Mr Flores Martin himself is self-taught, experimenting on 3D computer graphics software aged 13. By the age of 20, he was coding games. He set out working as a network engineer, teaching his skills to students who never had the opportunity to learn game development.
“It’s all been a massive learning curve since we started a few months ago. We’re pretty much alone trying to create something new.”
The game is nearly at the Alpha stage, meaning that it’s currently playable but that the graphics still need to be polished and the game is being tested for bugs.
It boasts vivid graphics, lovable animated characters, stimulating levels ranging in complexity and a brilliantly distinctive game play style. It will be available for 99c.
To help Pencil Pig complete the game, visit www.tangledtut.com.