Student Develops DS Game on a Shoestring

Amateur games development has been all the rage in the news this week. Today we reported on Shmup-dev's latest freeware competition, and yesterday brought news that Microsoft's XNA Game Studio is available for Beta testing. Also in the news today is Artisan, a small student team which won the 'most marketable product' prize in the Dare to be Digital competition held by Abertay Dundee University, Scotland.

Artisan's game, Metalheads, is theoretically a potential Nintendo DS title, although the shoestring operation runs on a PC and Wacom touchscreen tablet rather than a pricey DS dev kit. Speaking to Pocketgamer, team leader Tommy Millar described the game as a mix of 'Pikmin, Lemmings, Abe's Oddysee and Flashback'.

The eponymous Metalheads are tiny robots arranged using shapes drawn with the stylus. Formations include boxes, wheel and even helicopter rotors, and the helpful robots must be deployed as the player deems fit, in order to help lead character Meta progress through the level. Players are encouraged to replay levels to achieve high scores - while Meta cannot die, the humanoid robot can be delayed, making Time Attack the name of the game.

Flushed with success, Artisan can now only hope that the haughty games industry will recognise their talent and give them a shot at commercial success. Miller says that although the game was conceived as a DS title, it would also find itself quite at home on the Wii, even going so far as to moot connectivity possibilities between the two machines.

With consoles and PCs getting ever more powerful, it has been the trend to consider a return to the early days of the bedroom coder as impossible. But a cocktail of IP complacency on the part of big publishers, and more affordable development software falling into the hands of ingenious amateurs - not to mention more affordable ways of selling software - might yet see a more even playing field established for developers.