Project summary

The Difference Engine is a start-up business acceleration programme based in the North East. This project involved creating an engaging, fun and characterful viral Flash game to promote the launch of the Difference Engine programme.

Aims

The Difference Engine aims to take a smart business ideas and help them to market quickly with intensive mentoring and entrepreneurial help. Before launch, we were approached by CEO Jon Bradford to develop a Flash game which would form the nucleus of an online marketing campaign to generate a social-media driven buzz around the upcoming Difference Engine programme.

The brief was fairly open and the objective was to create something fun, engaging, irreverent and based around the North East but with a conceptual link to the ethos and thinking behind the Difference Engine programme.

Result

A raft of concepts and ideas were brainstormed, all with a different approach to the game premise and concept. After some initial meetings what was decided upon was a concept centred around North East hero George Stephenson and his famous competition-winning 'Rocket' locomotive.

The title of the game became 'The Difference Engine 1829', the premise pitching Stephenson's Rocket engine as a fantastic North-East entrepreneurial idea that would have been an ideal candidate for the Difference Engine programme had it been around in 1829!

The game takes a first-person view through Stephenson's eyes and armed only with a diagram of the completed Rocket, the player must assemble the finished locomotive by placing various pieces on it before the time runs out. Not all the items are useful though, and the player must skip any pieces that don't fit the rocket as quickly as possible.

The cartoony creative style combined with the engaging first-person view, genuine Geordie sound effects and a host of humorous touches made this a unique and successful game. The game had a conceptual drive that perfectly matched the ethos of the Difference Engine itself, and it communicated the regional aspect and the entrepreneurial spirit of the programme.