interview
Steel Minions, Creators of Piecefall
Sheffield Hallam University's First PS4 Game
Piecefall is an excellent geometric puzzle game set in an abstract floating world. It is also the first game to be released under the PlaystationFirst program. It's creators SteelMinions are students at Sheffield Hallam University. Wesley Arthur, Piecefall’s designer took the time to answer a few questions for us:
Work on Piecefall started in October 2013 can you tell us where the original concept came from?
Our 3rd year of university had an elective module that involved prototyping an original game concept. We were each given the opportunity to pitch a small party game idea to the group, before being sorted into mixed teams of artists and programmers.
For my idea, I considered several 'Mario Party-esque' ideas before deciding that I wanted to try something a little different. The concept I came up with was a cooperative combination of Tetris and Hole-In-The-Wall. The players would be presented with a single block, and a corresponding hole, and would have to work together to pass one through the other. Each player would observe a different perspective and control a different axis of rotation. Over the course of development it was refined, and eventually the multiplayer was dropped in favour of a more polished, and less confusing single player experience.
How many students have been involved in developing Piecefall?
Lots. I was the designer throughout, but there were at
least three separate phases to the development of the game, each involving a change in the core team. There were 5 members of the initial prototyping team on the PS3, 5 members of a programming team who got the game working on the PS4 and conforming to Sony’s technical requirements for publishing, and then 5 members of the final team that worked with SCE to completely revamp the gameplay and visual style. In terms of what you see today, most of that work was done by the final team, but the game wouldn’t have got where it was without the momentum created by all of the other stages. There were also other students who worked on technical prototypes on the PlayStation 3 (experimenting with things like grass and cloud rendering) and the music was outsourced to a friend of mine at another university.
How does it feel to see Piecefall on the Playstation Store?
It's very surreal. To see my work from university on such a huge platform is incredibly rewarding, and as it's the first of its kind, it's something I'll always be proud of. I'm really pleased that Hallam's studio, Steel Minions, will receive positive recognition for my project as it's a way that I can give something back to the university.
I'm extremely grateful to Hallam and Sony for giving me the opportunities that resulted in the PS4 release, and happy that my team and I have been diligent enough to make it a success.
Any plans for additional islands as DLC?
That depends on the next cohort of students coming through the Steel Minions studio, but it’s certainly a possibility.
What was your process for deciding on the trophy list for Piecefall?
Trophies are something that I enjoy as a gamer. I feel that they provide an additional reward to anything that the player feels was particularly challenging. It's something that gamers can share with each other, while adding replay value to the game itself.
The trophies were mainly based around what the player would expect to be rewarded for. They signpost significant stages throughout the game, and offer tougher challenges for the more expert players. Other trophies are there to motivate the player when they are finding a puzzle difficult, or to reward perseverance.
I often find that some of the best trophies reference in-jokes to gaming culture and other franchises. When creating the names, I tried to add subtle nods to some of my favourite names in the games industry. It's especially rewarding to read online comments when people recognise them.
Only a handful of people have obtained the "Nerves of Steel" trophy (which is earned by beating developers' record completion time of 9 minutes and 25 seconds in Expert mode). It is by far one of the hardest trophy I have ever earned. Which developer do we have to thank for setting the time?
Steven, our lead programmer, was by far the quickest out of all of the developers. Although I was designing them, he was always the one to play through the entire game the most, because of his constant code changes. In the end he became very familiar with the puzzles, and found that his own ability to solve the puzzles outmatched the games pace. Because of this, we introduced Expert mode, for those who were seeking a more hardcore challenge.
The trophy itself was inspired by Sonic & Sega All Stars Racing Transformed that had a trophy for beating staff ghosts. Knowing that you can beat the developers at their own game is a very rewarding feeling, and as we were a small team, it felt like a way of us connecting with the players.
And finally, I fondly remember spending hours playing Zool on the Amiga so I was excited to see Zool Planets on your project page. Is this still project you are trying to take forward?
Not at present. Jake (our Studio Manager) has tried hard to get teams of students motivated to work on this, but you have to bear in mind that my cohort graduating this year were born in 1992 when Zool was first released. Zool is part of Sheffield’s game development heritage, and I consider myself really privileged to work at Sumo with some of the amazing people who originally created that game, but my generation doesn’t remember playing Zool that much - simply because we were too young.
Piecefall is available now on the playstation store. You can also find out more by visiting the SteelMinions website.
Steel Minions is Sheffield Hallam University's own commercial game development studio which provides workplace simulation for students on Hallam's games degrees.
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