Dark Dot is a cutesy action shooter game with a twist! Players command a fleet of small minions known as Darklets to engage the enemy using different formations limited only by Players’ own imaginations. Embark on a mission to defeat the enemy forces of Elemental Planes and help the little Darklets triumph in world supremacy!

Unique Shape Manipulation Feature that is new to the shooter genre!

DRAW TO CHANGE FORMATION SHAPE
Intuitive one stroke drawing control, draw any shape in one single stroke and watch your Dark Dots fall into formation. Redraw your formation at any time (to suit your needs).

SCALE AND ROTATE FORMATION
Compact your formation to concentrate firepower spread out to increase your firing area or rotate to change your firing pattern!

The technology behind the core game mechanic of Dark Dot is the Flocking Animation and Modelling Environment (FAME). FAME is a method in which multiple units or agents react together as a flock or swarm in a consistent manner, based on inputs involving shape, space and time.

The research was funded by GAMBIT and the Principal Investigator is Associate Professor Ong Yew Soon, the director of the Centre for Computational Intelligence and Associate Professor with the School of Computer Engineering, Nanyang Technological University (NTU).

The technology is valuable in that it enables the user to define the shape into which a group of agents or units should flock and for the flocking behaviour to occur in real-time. The combination of these two factors presents potentially unique applications of strategy and tactics when applied within the context of games and simulations. The implementation within Dark Dot is the first step and demonstration of how this technology can be applied in a tactical sense within games.