SAGE 2016 – Game Round-Up

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Sonic has a very lively fan community, which often offers a large collection of enjoyable fan-creations to play. From the high quality 2D Platformers Sonic After & Before the Sequel and promising projects like Green Hill Paradise, the fan community creates some impressive projects. Many times, SEGA even pushes this, as they publicly showed support for fan creations.
Today I want to start a series of articles covering the event that is SAGE 2016. This event is where a large collection of fan creations are released on the official SAGE website and people can download the demos to play at home. The games part of this event range across a number of game types; 2D Sonic games, 3D Sonic games, Sonic in different genre’s and even games that are NOT using the Sonic IP are part of the event.
To honor these fan creations many developers and teams spent a long time making, I want to share my thoughts on some of the games I played over the past few days. This post won’t cover every game that is part of the event, but I will be releasing another articles that covers more games in the near future.


Sonic Utopia – Download Link

Sonic Utopia is something of an idea that many people wanted since they played Sonic CD. We watched the opening and saw Classic Sonic rolling round, jumping across objects and more. It made us say ‘I want a game like that’ and Utopia is very close to that concept in many areas.
It’s controls feel very responsive with most controllers and even works well on Keyboard & Mouse. Sonic can move around, spin-jump, roll and spin-dash. He even has the Super Peel Out from CD. From rolling down hills and keeping hold of your speed, you can go very far distances in this very open take on Green Hill Zone.
I spent over three hours just running around in this game, finding new paths and messing around with the physics system. I really loved this demo and found it to be a very enjoyable 3D Sonic adventure. I must commend the team behind this game for making this compatible with most PC’s, as through running on Unity, it has various settings to work on low-end and high-end computers alike.

Developers:
Mr Lange – Art, Animation, Sound and Music, Game Design
https://twitter.com/GreatLange
Murasaki Fox – Engine and Gameplay Programming
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP1V…
https://twitter.com/MurasakiKemono
Tpot – Additional Programming
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnNM…
PicsAndPixels – Additional Artwork
http://picsandpixels.deviantart.com/


Sonic vs. Darkness – Download Link

Sonic vs. Darkness is a fan-project that takes the mechanics/flow from Sonic Rush but applies it with some moves/abilities from Sonic Unleashed (wall jump, stomp). Level design pushes speed and it is a blast running around at the speed of sound through foes and other challenges. I really enjoyed playing this, as if you loved the Rush games, this is a proper successor to those titles.

The demo has two full zones to play through with two boss fights as well. It even has an online racing mode, but I didn’t try that out. Regarding how it runs on computers, the game ran perfectly find on my laptop and supported my PS3 controller (though it has full support for 360 Controllers as well).

Developers:

Creator & Programmer – Nefault1st

Artwork & Gimmick Spriters – Nefault1st (Kainoso) & Goncas23

*including original backgrounds and sprites from official Sonic games © SEGA®

Music Composer – Nefault1st (nekkosu)

Stage Designer – Nefault1st


Emerald Ties 

Game Page: http://emeraldties.thisisourcorner.net/

Ready to play? Grab the SAGE 2016 demo here!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zf2J5ZZ2EDw

When many think of the 2D Sonic platformers, they picture Classic Sonic rolling around. But Emerald Ties wants do to something different; have that same core gameplay but with Modern Sonic looks and styling. Say hello to Emerald Ties, a project recently brought into a new Sonic engine and it is one of my favorite games of the SAGE event.

Sonic controls perfect, with his jumps and rolls being responsive. Level design is also well constructed, with lots of higher and lower paths. Love one part of Relic Retreat Zone (second zone in the demo) where you can go forward or destroy some breakable rocks not far from the start of the stage. Another example is being able to use a hang glider in the same zone if you maintain a upper path.

All three zones in the demo are heavily polished, have no bugs and Sonic feels great running through the zone. The animation detail is great too; with Sonic’s animation after hitting a spring being my personal favorite. It really feels like Modern Sonic running through the Classic Era.

The game runs very well on most PC set-ups so I highly recommend you give the game a shot.

Developers

Gamerdude

Roles: Lead Director, Writer, Programmer, Web Developer

Naoshi

Roles: Director, Game Designer, Level Designer, Programmer, Pixel Artist

Blyde

Roles: Graphic Designer, Pixel Artist, Enemy Designer, Object Designer, Level Designer

Rael

Roles: Level Designer, Pixel Artist, Program Assistant

Contributors

Andy Tunstall – Music Composer
Jogurt – Music Composer, SFX Designer


Sonic Boom & The Smash Crew – Download Link

So, what would happen if you take Sonic Boom, add a bit of crazy humor and say “I want to make a bad game”. However, you make this game so polished, your joke project turns into a really solid and complete game?
That game is called Sonic Boom & The Smash Crew with this being a Smash Brothers-inspired game using Wisp items and having some fun levels to smash your way through with a cast of Sonic characters. I loved my time with this one as it is very feature complete. You have the traditional arcade mode but you have a full mission and verse mode as well. In addition, you have a large cast of characters to unlock like Silver, Marine and Shadow for example (so things are not just ‘Sonic Boom’ brand exclusive).
Controls for keyboard are responsive and it feels fine to play. Platforming in the mission modes is fun as well, with movement feeling fine. Even Smash attacks are responsive with the keyboard, but if you have a 360 controller that is supported.
This is overall a really fun fighter that has a lot of content to dig into.

Developers/Credits:

Game, engine, this dumb readme, level art, by Metalsonic3 (or just Metal)
Character art, bunch of different visual effects, arcade victory screens by Tyrzi

Voice actors:
SilliS as Sonic
Hukkis as Tails
Tyrzi as Knuckles
Gök as Amy
Rindou as Marine
Metalsonic3 as Silver
Rovo-sede as Shadow
Cadetthur as Eggman
Also included, not to spoil the characters: Nano, Terppa, Sampo, Darkkis, Zode, Fiffe and JohisLohis


Sonic Generations: The Lost Zones

Remember how Sonic Generations didn’t have the Game Gear Era games for the 3DS version of Generations, despite it being a natural fit considering the games concept? Well, that is finally happening through a Game Gear inspired fan project.
This will remake various zones from the Game Gear and Master System era Sonic titles in a new game using refined level design and controls. I had a lot of fun playing the games two zones, with Green Hill and Sky High Zone having fun level designs and being faithful to the original versions of said zones.
Game runs on most PC platforms, so you shouldn’t have any trouble running the game on your PC set up. I recommend you give this a shot, more so if you loved Sonic games like Sonic 2 Master System or Sonic Triple Trouble.

Developed by Justin


I will be writing about more Sonic fan projects in the future on 3WIREL. I hope you enjoy this article and try out some of these fun fan projects!

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