The ITIS freshman game has been released in the Russian video game store VK Play

The ITIS freshman game was released in the Russian video game store VK Play ,ITIS, video game development industry, software engineering.

The students created an adventure game in a humorous fantasy setting about cute animated plants "Gnomling's Quest" in just 3 months as part of an internship at the Department of the Video Game development industry. The game was noticed by VK Play experts and it got into a special section of the best student video games, becoming the only game from KFU and Kazan that managed to break into the Russian VK store. Now you can download it for free, play and leave a review. The team of the most popular project among users will be able to participate in the accelerator with mentoring support from top experts in the gaming industry.

Gnomling's Quest is an adventure game set in a humorous fantasy setting. The main character, the prince of the Dwarves, the weakest and most helpless race in the entire dungeon, suddenly wakes up with a mission to pass the great test and take his father's throne. The player will have to survive with the help of cunning, magical colors and stealth (invisibility). Available mechanics: flower hiding magic, monster scaring magic.
"Gnomling's Quest was influenced by several games at once. The architecture of the open world with the conditional division of the map into safe villages and dangerous zones outside is inspired by Death Stranding and Slime Rancher. Death Stranding also provided motivation for the quests: "go and carry it, because we're scared, but you're not." We borrowed from Slime Rancher an approach to building a world with biomes, large "rooms" and passages between them. And the visual style — low poly, with expressive cave design — is inspired by Deep Rock Galactic. The Gnomling race, to which the main character belongs, was inspired by the aranars from Genshin Impact."- said the team of creators of the game Happy Rats: Grigory Lotsko 11-407, Karim Galiullin 11-407, Emilia Zagitova 11-407, Kirill Petrukhin 11-407, Timur Frolov 11-404.
According to the results of the last summer internship of the Department of the Video game development industry, 12 small games were released, which the students posted on the platform for indie developers. itch.io , and the teams also sent applications to the VK Play lab. The Happy Rats team took the lead: their game "Gnomling's Quest" was released as a demo version in the Russian video game store VK Play in season 2 of a special section with student games. Vlada Kugurakova, head of the Department of the Video Game Development Industry, also liked the creative experiment.
"I am very glad that so many creative and talented students study at our department. The game "Gnomling's Quest" was made by first-year students in the course "Introduction to project practice". The guys have not yet attended courses from our department on programming and 3D modeling, but they came already charged with creating video games. Nikita Romanchuk, the curator of all the students' practices at our department, was able to motivate the guys to create a small but complete video game, a working product. This is a big and important part of the work of our department: not only to teach students the basics of video game development, but also to create them directly and bring them to mind. The Happy Rats team wholeheartedly approached the development of their first game, checking their course with the practice supervisor every week. I wish the team success with this game and their next projects! Already in their first year, students received an excellent case in their portfolio, which can become a weighty argument when applying for a job at a game studio. And also this experience can help to open your own studio, if the guys have such a desire!" - said the Candidate of Technical Sciences. Vlada Kugurakova.
The team created a short story about cute animated plants in just over 3 months. They thought out the story, mechanics, three-dimensional models, animations, and special effects for the game from scratch. An excellent result was noted not only at the relevant department, but also at VK Education. The project was strictly selected according to such parameters as: animation, models, graphic style, textures, visual effects, originality of the idea of the chosen genre and proposed changes, gameplay elaboration (detailing mechanics and/or meta), integrity, learning, narrative (verbal presentation of events), level design, sounds, music, optimization / performance, content, etc.  The experts especially liked the setting (the environment in which the action takes place) of the game "Gnomling's Quest" and the well-developed mechanics.
"There are very different games in demand now. The main thing is that they should be refined and really be full-fledged games that reveal the game mechanics and allow players to get emotions from passing. We have specially compiled evaluation criteria so that absolutely any project, regardless of genre and mechanics, can be evaluated. The main thing now is for the Gnomling's Quest project to be included in the players' request. If the project passed the criteria, but the players did not like it, then this is a signal that it is worth analyzing the feedback and reworking it. You should never blindly move because of your own desire to make a game exactly like that, because all projects are made for the market, games are a business, just like movies, like music, if no one watches or listens to them, they are considered failures, no matter how much the authors love them. That's why we give users and guests of the platform the opportunity to review all projects for a whole month and share feedback with each of them in order to determine who is really interesting." explained Alexey Drokonov, lead of the VK Play Laboratory project.

The ITIS Happy Rats team already has ideas to fully complete the game "Gnomling's Quest". The great interest of the audience will help to promote its refinement. We suggest you download and rate the game yourself using the link.