Simeon Acker
The Last Note
Best Art Award
Programming Lead - 2017
The Last Note is a game created in 48 hours and was the winner of SCAD's Outstanding Art Award for Global Game Jam 2017. It is a story-driven experience that utilizes the power of sound and music theory to create unique platforming mechanics and dynamic gameplay.
As lead programmer I managed our tech team to craft a fluid and engaging experience that utilized the competition's theme.
Synopsis:
The Master Composer, a musician known for his beautiful piano pieces, becomes unable to write music as he gets older and his hearing leaves him. Becoming despondent, he gives up and leaves his final, and most brilliant, piece unfinished.
Our hero, a resounding whole note inscribed on the pages of his music, sets out to find all other notes like him. Together they work to finish what the Master Composer had started.
The experience tells the heartwarming story of our brave music note as he sets out to write the most stirring composition ever made, eventually becoming himself the overture's Last Note.
Unreal Engine 4, Maya, Photoshop
The Team:
Simeon Acker | Programming Lead
Hunter Brown | Sound
Dylan Cook | Programming | Artstation.com/artist.moontal
Meghan Cornagie | Environment Art
Robert Dallas | Modeling
Mahreen Fatima | Art Lead | MahreenFatima.com
Jeff Flynn | Game Design
Dylan Hairston | Sound
Alyssa Juarez | Environment Art
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​Melody Kirby | Animation
Ryan Landis | Game Design
Victoria Law | Special Effects | VictoriaLawArt.com
Alexandra Miller | Modeling
Elijah Morris | Programming
Anthony Norcott | Level Design
Hugo Pereira | Design Lead | Hugoh2p.com
Tom Schmidt | Sound Lead | TomSoundsGood.com
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Design Process:
The theme for Global Game Jam 2017 was "Waves." Immediately after the reveal of the theme, my group of almost 20 designers, artists, and programmers met to brainstorm ideas for what game we could create together. Mahreen Fatima and I facilitated our group's discussion, during which everyone in the group contributed ideas as to how "Waves" could be interpreted.
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We had interpretations ranging from heat waves, to waves on the sea, to the action you take when greeting someone, but the idea we kept coming back to was sound waves. We envisioned a game where the player's movements would cause a sound wave to ripple out from them, and perhaps the player could even activate sound waves as a way to affect the environment.
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While each of us presented our strengths and specialties to the team, Mahreen and I organized the team into 4 distinct groups: Programmers, Designers, Artists, and Sound Designers. We were fortunate to have not only a strong Sound Team, but also a fair number of people who play instruments and have a knowledge of music theory.
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Since I have experience with piano and vocal performance, I joined the design team for the first portion of the development process. We knew that what we wanted was to create a game involving notes on a page and perhaps a song that was being composed as the player played the game.
Storytelling, for our group, was of great importance and we wanted to convey feelings of joy, sadness, hope, and triumph! Our story begins when the sad tale of the Master Composer ends; after losing his hearing, he gives up on music forever. The notes he left behind on his final, most brilliant, yet unfinished, piece are thrown into disarray. No longer endowed with a purpose, these notes become cold and unfeeling. One brave note, however, sets out to finish what the Master Composer started: to bring back into harmony those notes which had been sent into discord.
The final gameplay design that we decided on involved a "double whole note" who would be traveling along a sheet of music looking for other whole notes like him. Characters in our game would be represented as music notes, and each would have its own personality. Because of the chaos caused by the Master Composer leaving the scene, the different kinds of notes have become hostile to one another and attempt to hinder the main character as he seeks out his whole note brethren.
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As lead programmer I managed our tech team to craft fluid and engaging gameplay mechanics that utilized our theme.
