Art by Lena Wölk
Carl und Cari: Trubel in Tierstadt
The big town festival in Tierstadt is just around the corner, but there’s a problem. The townspeople can’t get everything ready in time, so they ask the twins Carl and Cari for help. Now they have to explore the town and help the various animal inhabitants with their jobs.
Carl and Cari is a serious game designed to introduce students between the ages of nine and eleven to different professions. The students get to know them through various mini-games and exciting stories, without realizing that they are learning anything.
Work Samples
As a programmer, my biggest task was to program different minigames that reflected the aspects of each of the jobs that the players could explore. In this example, I had to make a minigame where the players have to take care of different plants. All the plants in the game are real and have these exact requirements. I was also the person who wrote all the dialog in this scene, as well as the rest of the game.
Art by: Lena Wölk & Josef Killinger
Sound by Lars Kling
As the lead narrative designer and writer, it was also my job to create a world and narrative bible. The bible contains guidelines for writing dialogue, character creation, do’s and don’ts in terms of topics, and character profiles. This document is meant to be used by anyone working on the game looking for guidance when creating new aspects of the story.
Download the World and Narrative Bible here.
In the video above, you can see an example of the dialog I wrote for the game. The biggest challenge in writing the dialog was to combine fun with knowledge. The dialog should keep the young audience engaged while also providing information about the different jobs. The best children’s media not only entertains the children, but can also be enjoyed by their parents. Achieving that balance was one of my goals.
Art by Josef Killinger & Lena Wölk
Voice Acting: Yoshi Möller (Carl), Lena Wölk (Cari) & Josef Killinger (Guido)
PROJECT TAKEAWAYS
Troubles
- Changing dimensions: We started the project as a completely 2D game, but soon realized that our game would greatly benefit from 3D aspects. This meant that we had to redo some work, which set us back.
- Different skill levels: Some members of our team weren’t at the same technical level as others, which meant that work had to be redone several times or submitted after the deadline.
Successes
- Steam Release: Carl and Cari: Trubel in Tierstadt was the first game we ever released on Steam. It was also the first time in the university’s history that a game was released on Steam within one semester.
- Games Kickstart Win: At the end of each semester, our university holds an event where all the games developed in the previous six months are presented to the public. A jury then selects the best game. In the summer semester of 2024, this game was the winner.
- 3D experience: Since this was my first time working on a 3D game, I was able to gain insight into 3D programming and the 3D features of the Godot engine. Since the game is relatively simple, it was easy for me to understand everything.
