From Elective to Steam: Boars in Rome

Sometimes a game starts with a strange conversation and a funny idea. For Boars in Rome, it started with a story between a group of Creative Media & Game Technologies students about wild boars taking over the streets of Rome during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Our tech artist Ale was telling us about how boars regularly invade the streets of Rome,” the team explains. “They’d go through trash and harass pedestrians.” The idea of Boars in Rome sounded like a great album name, and eventually became the perfect title for their parkour game set in Rome.

The project originally started as an Unreal elective, with the team focusing on movement and level design. What began as a duo eventually grew into a team of four, bringing together level design, technical art, character art, 3D art, and music. Composer Janrinke, who the team had previously worked with during GameLab, also joined to create the game’s atmospheric, dynamic soundtrack. 

The team originally experimented with combat, but eventually decided to focus on what made the game most exciting: movement, exploration, and atmosphere. 

At the heart of Boars in Rome is a movement system designed around freedom. Players can wall-run across walls, swing from objects, and explore the environment without being restricted to specially marked parkour spots.

“We really believe that if you give players a free and intuitive movement system, they’ll explore and mess around simply because it’s fun,” the team says.

Inspired by games that transform familiar locations into compelling worlds, Boars in Rome uses the streets of Rome as its playground, giving players the freedom to discover the city in their own way.