Ramsey father and son duo team up to launch mobile phone game

Chris Turner, 52, and his son Alexander Summerfield, 21, of Ramsey, started worked on their game, Crystal Caves, for more than a year before releasing it on the Google Play Store this month.

An avid gamer in his youth, Chris would write game scripts on occasions but  had never got as far as making a game...until now.

He said: “Crystal Caves is based on a similar game I used to play a long time ago back in the days of eight-bit computing called Boulder Dash.

“I haven’t seen many like it since so I thought it would be good to make something like it, it’s also suited to my skills.”

Crystal Caves is an action-puzzle game that presents a 2D landscape in which the player has to navigate by removing soil obstacles.

Players have to be careful as there are boulders falling from above which can hurt the game’s character and ruin progress.

There are 100 levels in the game, each with a different objective such as collecting 20 blue crystals.

As Chris wrote the scripts for the game, Alexander helped out with the graphics.

Chris said: “Alexander did a game development course at the Colchester Institute and did an apprenticeship for a game development company in Ipswich.

Development - Alexander and Chris working on the game. (Image: Newsquest)

“He’s very skilled in games development and with my background as a software developer it was a natural idea for us to do something together.”

Games usually take a long time to develop and Crystal Caves took Chris and Alexander more than a year to complete.

He added: “There’s a lot to it, even a mobile game like this.

“I had to create a simple level then use that to make sure all the rules were working properly.

“At the same time, I would create one small aspect about the game then speak to my son about graphics of a man walking for example, then we would put that into the game.”

You can download Crystal Caves by visiting bit.ly/3wZgb6V.