The Project

A World Apart is a game project that began at UAT in the spring of 2009 that is being developed in XNA.  The game is a classically styled turn-based RPG with sixteen playable characters and hours of gameplay.  The game is being built using a custom game engine built in-house.  It is our intention to enter the game in independent game contests and get it approved by Microsoft via the XNA Creators Club for release on the Xbox Live Arcade.
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The People

The development team is comprised mostly of local UAT students; however, we encourage collaboration between various universities, groups, and online students who are passionate about video game development.  A complete list and profile of the members can be found under the Team Members section of this website.
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The Gameplay

The game is intended to be a classically styled RPG so many of the game mechanics are similar to that in 1990s J-RPGs.  In-game references to former games and worlds will be plenty as we try to keep the game humorous with a serious agenda.  The player controls various characters with unique overworld and combat abilities.  The overworld abilities of the characters have a wide range of uses including buffing the party,providing a means of passing obstacles, or enhancing existing functionality.  There are a number of classes available for each character that give the character different fighting styles and techniques. By balancing the character's classes, the player can defeat stronger enemies or fight longer.   By equipping runes to weapons, the characters' attacks become more diverse and powerful by attributing elements and enhancements.  The enemies and monsters of the game are organized into species and families and each can have a variation of one of the character classes.  This monster arrangement allows us to create a large number of diverse monsters that will make logical sense to the players that let's them use previous experience to create strategies for new encounters.  The game's level are being built in our own level editor/game engine that let's us use both tiles and objects to build the world quickly and neatly.
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The Story

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Living on the Eris piece of Leneth, Conlan and his brother have no parents and no family.  They are cared for by a friend's parents and a rugged woodsman.  Their adventure begins when an injured boy from the city collapses in their town.  They start out trying to save the villagers of Rodan, but they eventually find themselves trying to save a world that is being divided in more ways than one.  Throughout their journey, they find assistance and opposition from a wide variety of characters and creatures.  As the people of the planet lose hope of keeping the planet together, so too does their chances of accomplishing the impossible.

The Setting

The game's story is set on a planet that is literally be torn apart by the mysterious gravity of five moons.  The result is a drastically changed world where the planet is divided into five pieces that is only connected on one end.  The division has caused drastic changes to the terrain and caused most of the water to dissipate.  From the exposed earth, monsters have come to inhabit and endanger the citizens of the planet.  The seemingly inevitable, complete division of the planet causes tension among the inhabits as they vie for supplies and control.  At the small area where the pieces are still connected is the Union Point, where the world's leaders meet to face the impossible and come up with solutions to their crisis.