U-Gene

U-Gene is a genetically modified salamander designed to be a near indestructible lab assistant and guinea pig by the evil genius scientist Dr Turmoil. The United Interstellar Federation of Earthistan employed Dr Turmoil to develop a new super soldier to win an intergalactic war it was losing, badly. Dr Turmoil was happy to oblige, developing the Fury-nato-tron. “Half Shark, half bear, half cyborg, it’s teeth, it’s claws, it’s Robotic arm!!” When the government of the United Interstellar Federation of Earthistan could not afford to pay for the super soldiers, they bought U-Gene instead. And so, it’s up to U-Gene to save the universe.

Built in Game Maker Studio U-Gene was a procedurally generated side scrolling platformer developed from late 2017 to the end of 2018.Using a pellet of tile sets for each world and a long list of templates, an algorithm would build a near limitless number of unique levels of increasing difficulty. This forced players to rely on mastery of the game mechanics rather than memorization of the levels. The game featured many weapon variations, all with different strengths and weaknesses, however they all had a shared pool of ammunition which was also shared with the players health and the in-game currency. This made players make difficult and meaningful choices about how much health they would carry into each level, how much ammunition they would need and what upgrades they could afford to purchase. Each new run was generated from a unique seed which determined the level order, level structure, enemy placement and loot drops. This seed could be saved and shared by players meaning they could replay their favorite seeds and share them with other players so they could play through them.

Clik-Clak

Clik-Clak is a mobile phone app developed for iOS and Android designed to take the chore out of applying for refunds on late trains on the UK rail network. If a train is more than 30 minutes late on the UK rail network the ticket holder is entitled to a 50% refund of the face value of the ticket. This requires contacting the train provider, completing an on line form, providing proof of purchase and providing your private data such as home address and banking details. For a daily commuter or someone who uses the rail network a lot, this can mean filling out a lengthy form many times a year, possibly even a couple of times a month. Understandably this means millions of pounds goes unclaimed each year due to the inconvenience of the whole process. Clik-Clak removed all of the hassle of making a claim. Once a user had set up an account, claiming for a refund could be done in less than a minute leaving the user free to get on with their journey.

Built in C# and Xamarin the app featured a robust and secure log in feature which could use the phones biometrics or facial recognition protocols to increase security and privacy. Setting up an account was a quick an easy process which only needed to be done once so that each claim could be processed very rapidly. Clik-Clak would query a train travel API in real time to confirm if a refund was applicable for the users’ journey taking the uncertainty out of claiming and using the in-app camera feature to photograph your ticket as proof of purchase made the whole process both intuitive and super easy.

Level Design

Throughout the years CryoNoir has designed and built many different levels and environments using both Unity and Unreal game engines. Covering a vast range of environments and themes from low poly fantasy settings to futuristic space stations, Sci-fi horror to photorealistic underground cave networks. Full build videos are on the CryoNoir YouTube channel showing the design process and the final product.