Sara Chong Designs | Tembusu Bemused

A game to introduce students to faculty members

Tembusu College (NUS) approached Yanyun Chen and I in 2012 to create a game that introduced new students to the faculty. Being massive fans of Tim Schafer and Monkey Island, we decided to make a point-and-click adventure puzzle game.

I worked on the art direction while Yanyun wrote the story, dialogue and came up with the game design. Once the concept and ideas were settled, we called on our merry band of freelancer friends to create the animations, music, sound and programming.

The Concept

The Dean has gone missing, and you need to find him

We decided that the goal of the game was to find the Dean of the school, who had gone missing. In order to succeed, you must help each of the characters (staff members) in the game to solve their own problems. They would, in turn, give you items to help you solve puzzles throughout the game.

Art and Design

Creating a portrait of the college and its characters

We decided that each character in the game would be a highly caricatured version of the actual person, and the environments would be reflective of little-known dramas or flaws in the actual college building.

Yanyun went out to meet all the faculty included in our game, interviewing them about what they did and recording reference videos while she was at it. I designed the characters based on these videos and what their specializations were, and directed our animator and sound designer to bring them to life.