Uploaded December 2024 | Updated September 2026, 27 minutes ago
This student-made game was created in Fall 2024 by students in Cohort 34, as part of SMU Guildhall's Team Game Production I curriculum.
Escape Through the Wire is a stealth-strategy game with the theme of the player being the “man in the chair” and guiding their agent throughout the levels by hand drawn paths. The player must be decisive and first analyze the level before drawing their paths, so they don’t run into any enemies and restart the level. The player must also be ready to use their toggle button to get through closed doors or escape the visibility of any enemies by hiding within a jamming field. Upon beating a level, the player is rewarded with a level complete screen, giving them the satisfaction of beating a challenging level, and once the player beats the final level, they are shown the end credits, letting the player know that they have officially beaten Escape Through the Wire and have secured all of the secret files.
As a team, we all agreed early on that we wanted a unique movement system for our game that involved drawing/painting. Though the vision of the game wasn’t fully set in stone at the start, the core loop of hand drawn paths was a part of our original game idea and stayed even when we transitioned to creating a stealth game. The path forward from there was rocky as we were constantly juggling different game ideas to make the player feel more like the “person in the chair.” Though ideas like blueprints and camera switching ended up being cut, they also ended up being valuable lessons for us as a team, as we learned that we were trying to make a game with a wide array of interactions, when we should have been focused on refining the core elements of our game. After learning that valuable lesson, we were able to finish strong by finalizing our assets, refining our levels, and fixing the remaining bugs.
Escape Through the Wire was a two-and-a-half-month-long project. This project was beneficial to all team members as this was the first game any of us have ever created. We learned how to communicate effectively together by having daily meetings to check in on everyone’s progress and discuss ideas. We also made sure to have fun, and in doing so made it easier for us to open up to each other about problems we may be facing and to ask for help when needed. Another valuable lesson we learned about the Game Design process was to consistently stay up to date with documentation. The most important of all is that as a team we never let the room become a negative space, argue with one another, or criticize each other.
This student-made game was created in Fall 2024 by students in Cohort 34, as part of SMU Guildhall's Team Game Production I curriculum.
Escape Through the Wire is a stealth-strategy game with the theme of the player being the “man in the chair” and guiding their agent throughout the levels by hand drawn paths. The player must be decisive and first analyze the level before drawing their paths, so they don’t run into any enemies and restart the level. The player must also be ready to use their toggle button to get through closed doors or escape the visibility of any enemies by hiding within a jamming field. Upon beating a level, the player is rewarded with a level complete screen, giving them the satisfaction of beating a challenging level, and once the player beats the final level, they are shown the end credits, letting the player know that they have officially beaten Escape Through the Wire and have secured all of the secret files.
As a team, we all agreed early on that we wanted a unique movement system for our game that involved drawing/painting. Though the vision of the game wasn’t fully set in stone at the start, the core loop of hand drawn paths was a part of our original game idea and stayed even when we transitioned to creating a stealth game. The path forward from there was rocky as we were constantly juggling different game ideas to make the player feel more like the “person in the chair.” Though ideas like blueprints and camera switching ended up being cut, they also ended up being valuable lessons for us as a team, as we learned that we were trying to make a game with a wide array of interactions, when we should have been focused on refining the core elements of our game. After learning that valuable lesson, we were able to finish strong by finalizing our assets, refining our levels, and fixing the remaining bugs.
Escape Through the Wire was a two-and-a-half-month-long project. This project was beneficial to all team members as this was the first game any of us have ever created. We learned how to communicate effectively together by having daily meetings to check in on everyone’s progress and discuss ideas. We also made sure to have fun, and in doing so made it easier for us to open up to each other about problems we may be facing and to ask for help when needed. Another valuable lesson we learned about the Game Design process was to consistently stay up to date with documentation. The most important of all is that as a team we never let the room become a negative space, argue with one another, or criticize each other.
