The team behind Schacht is a group of students from the Stuttgart Media University. Schacht began in the winter term 2015/2016 at the Stuttgart Media University. Under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Stefan Radicke, 20 students from six different Bachelor and Master courses started working together on a 3D platformer. Trying to simulate real industry conditions, the students were organizing themselves and formed interdisciplinary departments like Game Design, Engineering or Quality Assurance, with some students taking on leading roles.
The next semester, in the summer term 2016, the project went through big changes. The team reformed, since some students had to leave the project due to internships or graduation, and new members joined the team. Additionally, the game got a great artistic und graphical overhaul, which cost a lot of time and effort. During this semester, 25 students worked on Schacht. At the end of the semester, in july of 2016, the game was already in a good state and looked promising – so promising that the university decided to try to publish it on Steam. The game was submitted to Steam Greenlight, got approved in only about two weeks and was positively received by the community. The university and the students, very excited by this outcome, decided to give the game another semester for further development and improvement, which is why first an Early Access version of Schacht was released in October 2016. This was particularly possible with the backing of the university and its Institute for Games, whose members and participants supported the student team in their ambitious plan to see their project in the Steam store, available for the public to enjoy.
Again, the team reformed, but this time it downsized deliberately to a core team of only 10 students, all having worked on Schacht the semester(s) before already. During the winter term 2016/2017, Schacht was available in Early Access and the team continued to refine and improve the game with the help and feedback of the community, and prepare for the final release which was planned for Q1/2017. Several new features and new content has been added during that time, a lot of bugs fixed, countless hours of work put into the game, and countless pizzas and burgers ordered. This is why the team was particularly proud when the game, after four and a half months of Early Access, was ready for its final release in February 2017. Since February 27th, Schacht is fully available on Steam.
But this is not the end of it – Schacht is currently undergoing even further development! The young company LAB132, its members being part of the Schacht team from day one, is partnering with the Stuttgart Media University to port the game to the PlayStation 4. Very exciting new features are planned, so stay tuned for the release of the PlayStation version in fall 2017!
TEAM
(no particular order, and with some students having participated more than one time)
Korbinian Kram, Laura Körting, Maria Floruß, Manuel Maier, Marvin Pohl, Jan-Niklas Keck, Jakob Schaal, Henrik Geißler, Lesley van Hoek, Arno Pitters, Jordy Roelofs, Laura Vicuna, Alexander Scholten, Andreas Eichert, Andreas Koch, Kevin Kutzner, Dennis Müller, Marc Braun, Eva Mattausch, Ksenija Ozebek, Stefanie Schuster, Jannika Seybold, Daniel Platau, Patrick Moosler, Bradley Boorer, Stamatia Galimpa, Rebekka Jaumann, Alex Napolitan, Athanasios Valkanis, Ozan Öztürk, Victor Gogröf, Julian Burgschweiger, Marcel Remy, Serbay Sönmez, Alexandros Smponias
