An Uncanny Knack

Well, at the start you've lost your captain, so you have no idea about the structure of the world - you have no map. The sailing is based on navigation, and you have to take information to the inhabitants to unlock new areas on your map. So when the player is travelling on the boat the player he can discover new environments - he can fish bottles which contain new pieces of map, and thinks like that.

When he discovers a new island there are always inhabitants, and they'll give you information on the area you're in - there are some shortcuts that way, and it gradually builds up.

Sailing in real life consists of multiple actions to take care of your boat - at first you have to prepare, and work out where you want to go. There's a compass that will show you where you need to go.

It's been four years now, working on games. When I first started at the school I wasn't the production manager, but after some time people told me it was something I was good at, and in the end that's what the team selected me to organise it.

To begin with we started working on board games - the very basics of gameplay mechanics. Then we worked a lot on visuals, and the look-and-feel of games, and in game design to make some concepts only with pictures. So we were thinking in very sensitive ways - something we're quite fond of.

It has to be intuitive, but you don't have to make a complete game to make people think. In fact, if you're designing for feelings, people will continue to think about it after they stop playing the game.

That's a very interesting question. In fact, at this point the prototype is owned by the school, because we developed it there. But the idea belongs to the team; so if we want to commercialise the game we have to reproduce all the stuff in it.

It's a bit like this year in school was a big pre-production process, to prepare us for all the difficulties we could encounter in the development process.

We've actually been looking for investment first, because we don't have a lot of money. We're creating a project that isn't Uncanny Fish Hunt, a smaller project we can develop in three months, to make some money - and then invest into the bigger production.

But hopefully, with Game Connection and other competitions, we might be able to make it with investors.