Company type | Private |
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Industry | Video games |
Founded | 2011 |
Headquarters | , Scotland |
Products |
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Guerilla Tea was an independent British video game developer based in Dundee, Scotland. The company is focused on the mobile and casual market and is interested in utilising video games design and technology within other areas of study.
Guerilla Tea developed Play to Cure: Genes in Space [1] in conjunction with Cancer Research UK; a world first game in which players analyse genetic data by playing the game. The project was released in February 2014, and has gone on to receive critical acclaim within the games and mainstream press, including a feature on The One Show.
Within one month of release there were 1.5 million genetic data classifications.
March 2014 saw the re-release of Guerilla Tea's debut title, The Quest, for mobile devices. They are currently working on Sandbox TD, and a number of smaller titles for mobile and web.
Guerilla Tea was founded in 2011 by four graduates from the Professional Masters in Video Game Development course at Abertay University. [4]
The company's first original IP release was the Rubik's Cube inspired puzzle game, The Quest, on iOS and Android. This was followed closely by a win in the TIGA £100k competition, [5] allowing the team to develop a prototype for an aerial combat game.
From here, Guerilla Tea established a relationship with DC Thomson and developed a number of web-based mini-games to tie in the Beano and Dandy brands, along with a prank collection app called Beano iPrank. [6]
In 2013, Guerilla Tea were approached by Cancer Research UK, and were eventually selected to develop the planned citizen science project, Play to Cure: Genes in Space, which was released on 4 February 2014. [7]
Play to Cure: Genes in Space [8] is a world first game in which players help to analyse genetic data by playing. The game is set 800 years in the future and places players in the employ of Bifrost Industries, a leading organisation in the processing of the fictional chemical resource, Element Alpha.
The gameplay involves players collecting Element Alpha and negotiating asteroid fields, then trading in the chemical for spaceship upgrades, and progression through the game's ‘employee ranking system’. The Element Alpha deposits double as the genetic data samples. Gameplay is divided into distinct sections: [9]
In early 2012 Guerilla Tea ran a workshop with the help of Enable Scotland where a small group of young people who have learning disabilities worked alongside company staff to design and create a small video game in a single afternoon. The company worked with Enable Scotland's East Renfrewshire Local Area Coordination Team to put on the event, which took place in Glasgow. [10]
The game developed was called On The Freerun, and was released on iOS and Android within the week following the event.
With the re-release of The Quest in March 2014, and Staking Claims the following month, the studio is now working on a series of smaller titles for mobile devices and web. In tandem with this, the studio is working on a number of games which all attempt to stir up childhood nostalgia in players; [11] Sandbox TD is a part of the series and currently in development.
Asteroids is a space-themed multidirectional shooter arcade video game designed by Lyle Rains and Ed Logg released in November 1979 by Atari, Inc. The player controls a single spaceship in an asteroid field which is periodically traversed by flying saucers. The object of the game is to shoot and destroy the asteroids and saucers, while not colliding with either, or being hit by the saucers' counter-fire. The game becomes harder as the number of asteroids increases.
Leisure Suit Larry is an adult-themed sex comedy video game series created by Al Lowe. It was published by Sierra from 1987 to 2009, then by Codemasters starting in 2009. The first six Leisure Suit Larry titles, along with Magna Cum Laude and Love for Sail Mobile, were distributed by Vivendi Games, while Box Office Bust and Reloaded were distributed by Codemasters. Currently, the games are being published and distributed by Assemble Entertainment.
In 3D computer graphics, a voxel represents a value on a regular grid in three-dimensional space. As with pixels in a 2D bitmap, voxels themselves do not typically have their position explicitly encoded with their values. Instead, rendering systems infer the position of a voxel based upon its position relative to other voxels.
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Cancer Research UK (CRUK) is the world's largest independent cancer research organisation. It is registered as a charity in the United Kingdom and Isle of Man, and was formed on 4 February 2002 by the merger of The Cancer Research Campaign and the Imperial Cancer Research Fund. Cancer Research UK conducts research using both its own staff and grant-funded researchers. It also provides information about cancer and runs campaigns aimed at raising awareness and influencing public policy.
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In video games, an open world is a virtual world in which the player can approach objectives freely, as opposed to a world with more linear and structured gameplay. Notable games in this category include The Legend of Zelda (1986), Grand Theft Auto III (2001) and Minecraft (2011).
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