Ready? Aim. Fire! Explore Napoleonic history and protect the tower from the attacking ships with our brand new arcade game, Cannonball, at Jaywick Martello Tower.
Napoleon never attacked Jaywick Martello Tower, so this game is an imagined war game between Napoleon and King George III at Mortella Point, Corsica. This is home to Torra di Mortella, the design of which inspired the Martello Tower’s built throughout the British Empire in the 19th century.
From working with a class at Tendering Technology College to developing game ideas at free holiday workshops at the museum, watch the short documentary below to see how we created this historical arcade game exploring the history of the fascinating building to engage younger audiences at the museum.
Workshops
This game was created with the help of students from Tendring Technology College and children who participated in a game making workshop at Jaywick Martello Tower. Through these workshops we explored the stories of the tower, discovering its incredible history and architecture, and discussed how we might translate these into an interactive exhibit. We then prototyped various games in Scratch to discover which ideas would be worth exploring.
- LEFT / RIGHT to aim cannon.
- SPACE fires cannonball.
- UP/DOWN changes cannonball speed
Behind the Scenes
To create the video game, we worked with Dave Norton from LimboTech. Working in Unreal Engine Dave crafted a beautiful mediterranean coastal environment, complete with an ever changing weather and a day/night cycle. Signals’ own Frazer Merrick produced the sound effects of the hefty cannon rolling and firing, as well as the ships collapsing.
As well as the 3D assets in the game provided by LimboTech within the game, we made use of the wonderful illustrations from our animation about the history of the tower – created by Cai Beschorner and Thitaphorn Mathurapan.
Fabricate of our arcade cabinet was done by Broa from Pelikinesis, an acclaimed maker who has worked with an incredible array of artists and organisations, such as; Anish Kapoor, Latitude Festival and ITV. Broa built our scale model of the tower, paying close attention to its irregular egg shape (designed to protect from attacks at sea), and the whole Signals team got involved with painting the arcade cabinet.
