Quark: A Game by Sam and Jesse

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Quark

Imagine playing a 2-D side-scroller.  You're moving along until you come across a metal barrier blocking the path, preventing you from progressing forward.  However, instead of reaching into your bag and pulling out a bomb to blow up the obstacle, you instead shrink down to molecular levels, rearrange the molecules of the barrier, and turn the metal obstruction into a cloud of vapor!  This is Quark, the only 2-D side-scroller that's awesome on so many atomic levels.

In Quark, you play as a hero who has the ability to transform objects into different materials by shrinking down to molecular and atomic levels and rearranging molecules and atoms to turn the object into something else entirely.  The player uses this ability to progress past obstacles and to defeat enemies.  Quark encourages creativity and freedom.  As such, there are usually multiple solutions to any given obstacle in the game.  For example:  the player comes across a body of water, and our hero cannot swim.  Well, the player may re-arrange the molecules of a nearby rock and turn it into wood to float across the water safely.  Or perhaps they may simply turn the water into ice and run across it before it melts back to water.  The game draws similarities from puzzle games such as Scribblenauts, Portal, and the yet to be released Valve game, Quantum Theory.

As we mentioned previously, Quark is 2-D with a unique twist.  While our hero is not shrunken down, he can run, jump, and push objects on a 2-D plane.  However, when our hero shrinks to the molecular and atomic levels, the view switches from 2-D to first person 3-D, allowing the player to manipulate and re-arrange molecules, electrons, neutrons, elements, etc.  So how will the player know how to turn certain elements into other certain elements?  Good question!  The player starts off only knowing how to manipulate objects into a few certain materials, however, as they progress through out the game, they learn about new elements and combinations of how to arrange molecules into new forms such as gold, helium, wood, glass, uranium, and carbon.  Players will also be able to revisit areas to unlock previously unaccessible locations for added replay value.

While Quark is an awesome game to play, it's also a great learning tool.  We want players to learn something while having fun.  Quark teaches players about valence, atomic numbers, the periodic table, molecules, the different states of matter, parts of an atom, and much more, all under the guise of playing a video game.  We hope to launch Quark as a console-based arcade game for Xbox Live and PSN.  Hopefully we could create a version for iPhone and Android as well!  Imagine, the touch based controls would be perfect for moving around and manipulating molecules and atoms!


We want Quark to be an awesome game, but we need your help to make it!  We are asking $300,000 dollars to make this game as awesome as it needs to be, and you will be rewarded for your contributions.  Rewards include free copies of the game, beta invitations, t-shirts, posters, helmets and more!  We appreciate your interest in our game, and we hope we can make it for you!