TIMES BALI, JAKARTA – Muhammad Ali Zulfikar, a student of information engineering at the State Polytechnic of Malang (Polinema), has successfully developed a horror game called “Nightwatch at the Gallery."  This game used Indonesia, especially Java in the 1980s and 1990s as the setting.

The main character in this game is a security guard or a haunted museum guard. In this game, the player is facing various kinds of obstacles to defeat the ghosts. The most interesting thing is that this game has multiple endings from missions that can be completed which makes this game interesting to play.

Muhammad Ali Zulfikar as the game producer explained that the development process of this game started from one of the independent campus projects. He also said that this game was done by a team of 12 people. 

To do this, they were divided into two different sub team. The first half is the 3-dimensional project team whose purpose is to create 3-dimensional object assets. The rest were assigned to program and manage or insert objects that have been created by the 3D team into the application. 

“Then, they work together to design the storyline from the beginning of the story to the end,” said Muhammad Ali Zulfikar when interviewed at Expo Polinema 2024, Tuesday (28/5/2024).

A visual intro of the Nightwatch at The Gallery game, Tuesday (05/28/2024) (PHOTO: Muhammad Ali Zulfikar/TIMES Indonesia)

The team has  the game several times at some game developer community events in Malang Raya. Therefore, they can get direct feedback from players or from other game developer groups to improve the quality of their game. 

In addition, Muhammad Ali Zulfikar, a Polinema student who became a game developer for "Nightwatch At the Gallery", revealed that the project originated from an independent campus.

After that, they developed it into a game that introduces Indonesian cultures through virtual games. Indonesian cultures like Java become one of the examples of products that must be shown to introduce to all players. 

“These products include batik, paintings, and wayang in it,” he adds.

In addition to technical matters, Muhammad Ali Zulfikar admitted that big challenges included game development and also compiling background or storyline ideas.

The team not only had to create a thrilling story, but had to combine it with authentic Indonesian culture. 

Furthermore, creating object assets and incorporating them into a large number of applications with limited time became one of the major challenges for the team.

The Informatics Engineering team from Polinema who successfully developed this game hopes that this can be an open way to introduce Indonesian culture to the world through this game media. 

“This game is still in the development stage or demo version. The future plan is to be able to upload the full version in June,” he said. 

For anyone interested into this game which created by the State Polytechnic of Malang, Muhammad Ali Zulfikar invites gamers to visit the website https://alizul01.itch.io/nightwatch-at-the-gallery. (*)