SPIRITUS is a colaborative project between James Hollington (BA(hons) Interactive Media) and Debbie Stephens (BA(hons) Computer Games Design). Their aim was to create two three level Flash games based around the idea of life and survival in the wild. In one game [ALATUS] you are in control of a bird and in the other [FERUS] a wolf.

The visual treatment has been inspired by the Flash games of Ferry Halim, and the PlayStation2 game Okami. The games are painterly and pastoral, with bright colours and attention to detail; using as little vector graphics as possible. The aim was to create games that were visually stunning as well as fun to play. James and Debbie believe visual aspects are equally as important as gameplay mechanics but sadly in the case of online Flash games, the art is often overlooked. They wanted to push Flash as hard as possible to cope with higher resolution images and lots of them!

The gameplay is simple with as few controls to press as possible and the games are non-violent, to make the games accessible to a wider audience. The games also feature no HUD (Heads-Up Display) during gameplay, meaning no health bars or score totals. This allows for a less cluttered game screen and encourages players to focus more on enjoying the experience of playing the games, rather than concentrating on their score. However there are hidden bonuses to find and at the end of the game the scores are added to a database and then ranked to challenge regular gamers and encourage a sense of competition.

The games will be shown here [gotoAndPlay09 (8th & 9th May 2009)] and here [SuperMonsterCandyAttack (29th May - 5th June)].