ITS Cyber Security Week

IT Services at the University of the West of England commissioned a team of four students through enterprise studio Playwest to develop three games that cover cyber security concepts while being a spin on classic arcade games. Four arcade cabinets were built to house the three games and were shown on campus to staff and students during Cyber Security Week.

Builds available here

Type Fighter

Type Fighter is an asymmetrical two player shoot 'em up typing game where one player moves and shoots while the other player supports by typing in commands, created using C# in Unity. This was created during a week long gamejam with the theme of 80's arcade and computer security. A further two weeks were spent expanding and polishing the game, the final game having three levels and a tutorial level. This was created by a team of four people (three programmers and an artist) with C# in Unity, music was provided by Ryan Callard.

Inspiration for the supporting abilities comes from computer terms that relate to computer security:

  • Update unlocks more abilities and upgrades the player
  • Firewall and Spam Filter generate protective walls
  • Antivirus and Scans temporarily upgrade the players projectiles (exploding and homing)
  • Restore heals the player
  • Authenticate activates a powerful laser weapon that sweeps through enemies
  • Backup generates copies of the player and can revive the player if they get destroyed
  • Encrypt locks the players health making them temporarily invincible
  • Factory-Reset resets all current elements (updates, health, lives, destroys all enemies) of the game except for score

Inspiration for the enemies come from computer security risks:

  • Spam/Adware cause popups to appear
  • Spyware follow the player when they close enough
  • DoS appear in large amounts and rush the player
  • Keylogger that only shoots when the supporting player types
  • Trojans that multiply on death
  • Corrupted files that have varying abilities
  • Four different bosses that can only be defeated by guessing the bosses password

Key features:

  • Asymmetrical multiplayer
  • Shoot 'em up with typing
  • 10 upgradeable abilities
  • 8 enemy types and 4 bosses
  • Three levels and tutorial
  • Secret ship designs and cheats
  • Local leaderboard

Spamphibian

Spamphibian is an email management game which takes inspiration from the arcade classic, Frogger. The player must navigate an office, avoiding co-workers and sorting emails all the while trying to keep the boss happy. Emails must be sorted depending on whether they are spam or from a legitimate source. Things to look for that may identify what category the email should be sorted to are the sender address, the content and any suspicious links. There are five days to survive with ramping difficulty as the workers move faster, email sorting requirement increases and the boss becomes more easily agitated. Depending on player actions and performance there are seven possible endings. Created in three weeks were spent expanding and polishing the game, the final game having three levels and a tutorial level. This was created by a team of four people (three programmers and an artist) with C# in Unity, music was provided by Ryan Callard.

Key features:

  • Traditional Frogger tutorial
  • Frogger in an office setting
  • 60+ emails to be sorted with narrative elements
  • Easily agitated boss with free movement
  • Seven possible endings
  • Local leaderboard

Goost

Goost is a competitive two player action game with an underlying randsomware theme which takes inspiration from arcade classic, Joust. Players must collide with and defeat the AI to collect score and data/coins. Players must also collide and defeat the opposing player so that they lose their data/coins. The winner is decided by who has the highest score by the end of the game.

Key features:

  • Joust inspired gameplay
  • Competitive two player
  • Three different enemy AI behaviour
  • Twitter integration to show internet security tweets via plane aerial advertising in the background
  • Local leaderboard