Students Making Metalheads Game Aim for DS

It’s great when very nice people come up with homebrew games for the Nintendo DS. It also bodes great for the community if even students are getting support and winning awards for developing their own games for the DS. It only means a future with more games for us gamers.

The bunch of students, known as Team Artisan, have already won at the recent “Dare to be Digital” competition which was held at the University of Abertay Dundee in Scotland for having a DS prototype with “the most market potential.”

The game, Metalheads, was described by team leader Tommy Millar as something akin to a Frankenstein-ish merging of Pikmin, Lemmings, Abe’s Oddysee and Flashback. He also says that the team chose the DS to be their target platform because it was much more “direct” and “intimate” compared to other platforms.

A nice tidbit about the game’s development is that since the team couldn’t actually get a DS development kit, Metalheads was developed on the PC using a tablet as an odd replacement for the touchscreen. The team is trying to interest companies into making Metalheads a commercial product. Artisan may have some difficulties though, as even Millar admits that most of the info he needs is “hidden away.” If only DS development kits were easier to get a hold of….

It’s great when very nice people come up with homebrew games for the Nintendo DS. It also bodes great for the community if even students are getting support and winning awards for developing their own games for the DS. It only means a future with more games for us gamers.

The bunch of students, known as Team Artisan, have already won at the recent “Dare to be Digital” competition which was held at the University of Abertay Dundee in Scotland for having a DS prototype with “the most market potential.”

The game, Metalheads, was described by team leader Tommy Millar as something akin to a Frankenstein-ish merging of Pikmin, Lemmings, Abe’s Oddysee and Flashback. He also says that the team chose the DS to be their target platform because it was much more “direct” and “intimate” compared to other platforms.

A nice tidbit about the game’s development is that since the team couldn’t actually get a DS development kit, Metalheads was developed on the PC using a tablet as an odd replacement for the touchscreen. The team is trying to interest companies into making Metalheads a commercial product. Artisan may have some difficulties though, as even Millar admits that most of the info he needs is “hidden away.” If only DS development kits were easier to get a hold of….