Tag: The Power of Paint

Last updated
Tag: The Power of Paint
Developer(s) Tag Team
Publisher(s) DigiPen Institute of Technology
Programmer(s)
  • Pongthep Charnchaichujit
  • Brett English
  • Tejeev Kohli
  • Theodore Rivera [1]
Artist(s)
  • Pongthep Charnchaichujit
  • Joshua Jones
  • Tatsuang Tantakosol [1]
Composer(s) Tyler Woods [1]
Platform(s) Microsoft Windows
ReleaseMay 1, 2008 [1]
Genre(s) Puzzle-platform
Mode(s) Single-player

Tag: The Power of Paint is a 2008 puzzle-platform game. The game was developed for Microsoft Windows by Tag Team, a group of students from the DigiPen Institute of Technology. The game's core mechanics is the use of a special paint sprayed from the player's paint gun to impart physical properties to surfaces, which, in turn, affect the user's movement. Tag won the Independent Games Festival Student Showcase award in the same year. The project team was hired by Valve, using the concepts of Tag as new puzzle elements in their game Portal 2 .

Contents

Gameplay

In Tag, the player uses a paint gun to spray surfaces with three types of paint so that they can then arrive at difficult-to-reach locations. Tag-power-of-paint.jpg
In Tag, the player uses a paint gun to spray surfaces with three types of paint so that they can then arrive at difficult-to-reach locations.

The player is tasked with maneuvering through nine different greyscale cityscapes, which serve as platform-oriented puzzles. To solve each puzzle, the player must use a paint gun that has the capacity for an unlimited quantity of three types of unique surface-altering paint. However, the cans for each paint type must be located in the level before the player can use that particular color. The earliest to be accessed is the green paint, which allows players to jump on horizontal surfaces, or bounce off of vertical surfaces while still gaining height. The second paint, red, causes the player to rapidly gain momentum. Blue paint, the final type, enables the player to walk on any surface, regardless of whether it is a vertical plane or ceiling. The paint gun also has a removal feature, which erases any paint that has been sprayed. Players are able to use a combination of the paints to help solve the puzzles: the player can coat two sides of a narrow vertical space with green paint to execute a wall jump to climb up, or can lay a path of red paint followed by green paint to create a long-distance jump. The player can only die if they fall off the level, though should this happen they would invariably be revived either at the start of the level or at the most recent checkpoint touched.

Development

Tag was developed by a team of seven students as part of their course at the DigiPen Institute of Technology, and took approximately 18 months to create. [2] This process included the writing of a complete 3-D game engine from scratch. [3] Their initial concept involved emulating the playground game of tag, using paint to tag other players; the development of their base engine for this prototype took about four months. However, this idea was dropped when they found that the painting mechanics were more enjoyable than the actual tagging. For the second prototype, team included the former with additional power-ups that could be collected. Yet this decision was also revised and power-up functionality was finally transferred to the paint itself, a process that required the developers to redesign the game substantially five months before its projected release. [3] While gauging the initial reactions to Tag, they found that players were easily frustrated with elements of the game. In response, the team developed an in-game editor to quickly iterate playtesting feedback into the level design. Although the developers chose to limit the length of the game to around a half-hour, to render it eligible for the Independent Games Festival, they agreed to produce a more professional version once they had obtained sufficient funding. [3]

DigiPen released the game on Steam on April 18, 2022. [4]

Reception

Tag won the Student Competition at the Independent Games Festival in 2009. [5] The developers have been praised by industry journalists for the music, the complexity of the puzzles, and the integration of the graphics with the game's mechanics. Travis Fahs proclaimed it to be the second best independent game of 2009, a "compelling piece of puzzle design", and one they hoped would develop into a full-scale commercial product. [6] GameSpot commented that the game was a cross between Portal and Mirror's Edge , and applauded the simple and integrated mechanics. [7]

Since the release of Tag, the programmers have been brought on as developers for Valve. Their work was incorporated into new puzzle elements involving the paint concept into Portal 2 , in a similar manner that another DigiPen project team, Narbacular Drop , was brought into Valve with their work forming the basis of Portal. [8] [9]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Independent Games Festival</span> Annual video games festival

The Independent Games Festival (IGF) is an annual festival at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), the largest annual gathering of the independent video game industry. Originally founded in 1998 to promote independent video game developers, and innovation in video game development by CMP Media, later known as UBM Technology Group, IGF is now owned by Informa after UBM's acquisition.

Narbacular Drop is a 2005 puzzle-platform game developed by Nuclear Monkey Software. It was the senior game project of students attending DigiPen Institute of Technology. The gameplay consists of navigating a dungeon using an innovative portal system. The player controls two interconnected portals that can be placed on any non-metallic surface. Gabe Newell, managing director of Valve, took interest in the team's work and employed the whole staff at Valve. The developers went on to develop the critically acclaimed Portal using many of the same concepts.

<i>Portal</i> (video game) 2007 video game

Portal is a 2007 puzzle-platform game developed and published by Valve. It was released in a bundle, The Orange Box, for Windows, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and has been since ported to other systems, including Mac OS X, Linux, Android, and Nintendo Switch.

<i>Braid</i> (video game) 2008 puzzle platform video game

Braid is a puzzle-platform video game developed by Number None and considered an indie title. The game was originally released in August 2008 for the Xbox 360's Xbox Live Arcade service. Ports were developed and released for Microsoft Windows in April 2009, Mac OS X in May 2009, PlayStation 3 in November 2009, and Linux in December 2010. Jonathan Blow designed the game as a personal critique of contemporary trends in video game development. He self-funded the three-year project, working with webcomic artist David Hellman to develop the artwork.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christopher Erhardt</span>

Christopher Erhardt was the Head of School - US Campuses for the Academy of Interactive Entertainment (AIE) from the time the school opened until his death. From 1998-2007 he was the Associate Dean as well as V.P.-Production at DigiPen Institute of Technology in the United States.

<i>Portal 2</i> 2011 video game

Portal 2 is a 2011 puzzle-platform game developed by Valve for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360. The digital PC version is distributed online by Valve's Steam service, while all retail editions were distributed by Electronic Arts. A port for the Nintendo Switch was included as part of Portal: Companion Collection.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robin Hunicke</span> American video game designer and producer (born 1973)

Robin Hunicke is an American video game designer and producer. She is a professor of game design at UC Santa Cruz and the co-founder of Funomena.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Potato Sack</span> Alternate reality game

The Potato Sack is the name of an alternate reality game (ARG) created by Valve and the developers of thirteen independent video games to promote the release of Valve's game Portal 2, in April 2011. Valve president Gabe Newell envisioned the game as a "Cross Game Design Event" in December 2010, and allowed the developers free rein to design the game using Valve's Portal intellectual property. The game, requiring players to find and solve a number of puzzles hidden within updates of the thirteen games, led to the opportunity for players to release Portal 2 about 10 hours earlier than its planned release by playing games under the pretense of powering up GLaDOS, the sentient computer antagonist from the Portal series. The ARG's theme of potatoes is based on plot elements within Portal 2, specifically that for part of the game, GLaDOS's personality module is run off a potato battery.

<i>SpaceChem</i> 2011 video game

SpaceChem is a puzzle and indie game by Zachtronics Industries, based on principles of automation and chemical bonding. In the game, the player is tasked to produce one or more specific chemical molecules via an assembly line by programming two remote manipulators that interact with atoms and molecules through a visual programming language. SpaceChem was the developer's first foray into a commercial title after a number of free Flash-based browser games that feature similar puzzle-based assembly problems.

Zachtronics LLC is an American video game developer, best known for engineering-oriented puzzle video games and programming games. Zachtronics was founded by Zach Barth in 2000, who serves as its lead designer. Some of their games include SpaceChem, Infinifactory, TIS-100, and Shenzhen I/O. Infiniminer (2009) inspired the creation of Minecraft.

Portal is a series of first-person puzzle-platform video games developed by Valve. Set in the Half-Life universe, the two main games in the series, Portal (2007) and Portal 2 (2011), center on a woman, Chell, forced to undergo a series of tests within the Aperture Science Enrichment Center by a malicious artificial intelligence, GLaDOS, that controls the facility. Most of the tests involve using the "Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device" – nicknamed the portal gun – that creates a human-sized wormhole-like connection between two flat surfaces. The player-character or objects in the game world may move through portals while conserving their momentum. This allows complex "flinging" maneuvers to be used to cross wide gaps or perform other feats to reach the exit for each test chamber. A number of other mechanics, such as lasers, light bridges, high energy pellets, buttons, cubes, tractor funnels and turrets, exist to aid or hinder the player's goal to reach the exit.

<i>Cogs</i> (video game) 2009 video game

Cogs is a puzzle video game released in 2009 by Lazy 8 Studios, originally released as a Microsoft Windows title, but receiving subsequent ports to other operating systems, mobile platforms, and game consoles. The game requires the player to manipulate a three-dimensional object's sides as sliding block puzzles as to complete specific goals, such as meshing gears to complete a clockwork mechanism or routing gas flow through pipes to a balloon.

<i>Quantum Conundrum</i> 2012 puzzle-platform video game

Quantum Conundrum is a puzzle-platform game developed by Airtight Games and published by Square Enix. It was directed by Portal lead designer Kim Swift. The game was released for Microsoft Windows via Steam in June 2012, and for PlayStation 3 via PlayStation Network, and Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Arcade in July 2012.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kim Swift</span> American video game designer

Kimberly Swift is an American video game designer best known for her work at Valve with games such as Portal and Left 4 Dead. Swift was featured by Fortune as one of "30 Under 30" influential figures in the video game industry. She is described in Mental Floss as one of the most recognized women in the industry.

<i>Perspective</i> (video game) 2012 video game

Perspective is an experimental puzzle video game that includes aspects of a 2-dimensional platform game. The player moves the avatar through a 2D screen that changes based on the player's camera angle in 3D space. This perspective-shifting mechanic is used to reach a goal at the end of each level. When the player takes control of the camera angle, the 2D avatar is locked in place until the player decides to return to 2D mode.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mikengreg</span> American independent video game company

Mikengreg is an independent video game development team of Mike Boxleiter and Greg Wohlwend. Their games include Solipskier, Gasketball, and TouchTone. The two met in a game development class at Iowa State University and later began to collaborate on the Adobe Flash game Dinowaurs. When the project was funded, they founded Intuition Games with other college friends in Ames, Iowa, where they worked on small Flash games such as Gray, Liferaft, and Fig. 8 for Flash game sites such as Kongregate. Dinowaurs was one of the first games signed for the Kongregate platform. Their other games involved controlling the weather, influencing individuals in a riot, and riding a bicycle. Boxleiter and Wohlwend worked on several additional games that were put on hiatus.

<i>Aperture Tag</i> 2014 video game

Aperture Tag: The Paint Gun Testing Initiative is a 2014 puzzle-platform game developed by the Aperture Tag Team. Originally made as a mod of Valve's Portal series, it was released on July 15, 2014. The game removes the iconic portal gun of the series and instead utilizes a newly created paint gun that fires two kinds of gel with different properties. The game features new characters and voice acting, along with a co-op mode that includes a level editor.

<i>Portal Stories: Mel</i> Single-player mod of Portal 2

Portal Stories: Mel is a 2015 single-player modification for Portal 2, developed by Prism Studios. Like the official Portal games, it is a puzzle-platform game that involves placing interconnected "portals" to solve puzzles. Set in the Portal universe, players control the test subject Mel, who has to escape an underground facility after she spends decades in artificial hibernation.

<i>Starseed Pilgrim</i> 2013 video game

Starseed Pilgrim is a 2013 puzzle-platform game from independent developer droqen. Players plant 'starseeds' which grow into plants, each with different growth patterns and interaction mechanics. Players plant these starseeds on floating platforms and on fully-grown plants in order to traverse the game world. The game was developed in Adobe Flash and was released in April 2013 for Windows and OS X. Reviewers praised Starseed Pilgrim's game mechanics and the process of learning their interactions, but criticized the learning curve as steep. The game was a finalist for the Excellence in Design award at the 2013 Independent Games Festival.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Tag: The Power of Paint". DigiPen Institute of Technology . Retrieved April 19, 2022.
  2. ↑ "Tag Wins Best Student Game Award at the 2009 Independent Games Festival". DigiPen. Archived from the original on 2012-05-25. Retrieved 2010-03-08.
  3. 1 2 3 Tejeev Kohli (2009-04-17). Independent Games Festival Student Showcase Winners, 2009 (Interview). Chroma Coders. Retrieved 2010-03-08.
  4. ↑ Bailey, Dustin (April 18, 2022). "The free indie game that became part of Portal 2 hits Steam". PCGamesN . Retrieved April 24, 2022.
  5. ↑ "2009 Independent Games Festival Winners". Independent Games Festival. 2009. Archived from the original on 2010-02-10. Retrieved 2010-03-08.
  6. ↑ Fahs, Travis (2009-01-23). "Independent's Day Vol. 17: Top 10 Indie Games". IGN. Archived from the original on January 26, 2009. Retrieved 2010-03-08.
  7. ↑ MAMerrific (2009-04-01). "Indie Spotlight - Tag: The Power of Paint". GameSpot . Retrieved 2010-03-08.
  8. ↑ Leahy, Brian (2010-03-08). "Valve Hires DigiPen Team; Seemingly for Portal 2". Shacknews . Retrieved 2010-03-08.
  9. ↑ Gaskill, Jake (2010-06-18). "E3 2010: Portal 2 Preview". G4TV. Archived from the original on 2012-07-07. Retrieved 2010-06-19.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.