Supernauts
In 2011, we founded Grand Cru in order to make an online multiplayer 3D sandbox building mobile game. Realtime multiplayer and proper 3D were still rare on mobile at the time and Supernauts was easily the most ambitious mobile game project so far. It was released in 2014.
One of the successes was the new “casual player friendly” UI for exploring and interacting with a 3D world on a touch screen, while at the same time being able to edit the world in realtime. It also had some pretty nutty characters and a story that featured hilarious global warming. (And Space Fish.)
The original Supernauts concept was MMORPG-ish, but the design evolved towards simply building the coolest possible “turfs”. The endgame was all about teams co-operating to build the best turf in themed contests, winner chosen by an in-game community voting system. There was no separate editor; the turfs in the above community-made video were constructed inside the game.
Art by Antti Pesonen and Vesa Lepola. Animation by Anima Vitae. Video by Joonas Mäntynen.