Non Compos Mentis

view screenshots in the Gallery

A First/Third Person Puzzle game where character animation is integrated into the core design.

The game demo won the 1st place design award at the Game Republic student showcase in April 2008.

Inspired by some of the recent, brilliant, puzzles games such as Portal and Braid.  I wanted to create a puzzle game with its own twist.  As I was in the middle of a Masters in Animation, I wanted to integrate character animation into the core design and function of the puzzle game.

Taking influence from the Golem of Prague legend, I came up with a character that I unimaginatively dubbed the  'Golem'.  A stone statue that would come to life and morph into various shapes in order to help the player navigate the puzzle (For example, morphing its arms into a staircase).

Non Compos Mentis was built using the Unreal 2.0 Runtime demo.

The Team

My role in the project was designer, level designer, character designer and animator.

Programming was done by the talented Georg Tamm

Concept art and static meshes were created by Phil Hewson

Download links are below the trailer

Download the Prototype

Download from File Dropper (saves my bandwidth)                                      Download from my site (if the other link is down or slow)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Launch Instructions and Controls

As the game is a prototype, developed in a very short time frame, there's no fancy, technical, frankly unnecessary, shortcut exes ;)  You also have the immense privilege of accessing all the alpha builds and test levels (which I forgot to delete).

So this is how you access the game after downloading it:

1: Unrar the file (requires Winrar - free to download)

2: Open the folder and then the 'UnrealEngine2RuntimeDemo' folder and go to the 'System' folder.

3: In this folder you will find 'UE2Runtime.exe' and this will start the game (finally!).  Wait for the 10 second count down and click OK.

4: 'Golem_Level_1' is the final prototype with all made levels so load that one.  The others are unfinished alpha or test levels. (and may not actually work)

Controls

Standard WASD movement (W - forward, S - back, A - strafe left, D - strafe right) and mouse to look around.

SPACEBAR - Jump

B - toggles 1st/3rd person camera

The objective of each level is to reach the glowing orange orb.  To do this you will need to use the 'Golem' Statues.  To manipulate a Golem you must first touch it (a line of game text will indicate that it has been touched). 

You can now use the Golems powers:

K - toggles 'Stair Arms'.  This allow you to then walk up the Golem, as if it were a staircase.

J - toggles 'Tall Stair Arms'.  This will raise the Golem up.  Useful when combining Golems to create taller staircases.  (this can only be used once 'Stair Arms' has already been activated).

H - toggles 'Bridge Arms'.  This allows you to cross large gaps.

G - toggles 'Tall Bridge Arms'.  This can use used to bridge deeper gaps.  Golems can even be pushed up stair golems to bridge even deeper gaps.

M - Pushes the Golem from the side you are looking at (to push it the opposite direction, move around and look at the opposite side).

N - Rotate the Golem 45 degrees.

*Note: for the 4th level, Golems can be pushed up the stair arms of other golems.*

 Debug/Cheat Keys: (these should not be used to play the game properly, but feel free to experiment)

F - toggle fly mode

L - Scales golems (a feature that was not implemented, be sure to scale the Golem back to original size if you intend to complete the level correctly)