Desert Dash

The game

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“Desert Dash - 15th Anniversary Challenge” is a video game created to celebrate the anniversary of the founding of the AKJOHNSTON company and at the same time tell through a very detailed storytelling the company's world, its vision and its values.

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The player in the role of CEO Austin Johnston, enters the AKJOHNSTON universe reconstructed for the occasion completely in pixel art. From the interiors of the California headquarters to the exterior, up to the creation of a dreamlike space, the “bunker”, in which a member of the team guides the various projects created over time reproduced in pixel art, which represent the company's flagship.

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The player is in a story: in the role of Austin he can choose between three different skins (business man, superhero or David Bowie), leaving his office the company van that must take him to the Coachella Festival he forgets about him.

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Here begins a two-level adventure. With an endless game mechanic, the player must run down the street to reach the AKJOHNSTON van. During his run he will have to jump, avoid obstacles and collect coins but as soon as he arrives in front of the Pizzeria, where the company usually takes place lunch breaks, he will no longer have to collect coins but slices of pizza.

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The player, during the race, will also have to delete the Slack notifications that a good CEO is always on his device. Here, at the end of the road, the AKJ van is ready to let Austin board to continue the adventure in the direction of Desert Festival.

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If the player passes the first level, he will leave the streets of Anaheim in California to finally get on the AKJOHNSTON van and face the highway that crosses the desert. Here, in the second level, between dinosaurs and installations that recall the symbols of the area and the projects carried out by the company, the player will have to face a slalom in the street to reach the destination, where part of the team is setting up something special for the event. At the end of the video game, the player finds himself in desert traffic and finally, after hours... he arrives at the Coachella Festival.

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At the end of the video game, the player can see the score obtained in a ranking, so that all players can know their position.

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Objectives

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The video game “Desert Dash - 15th Anniversary Challenge” was created to celebrate the 15th anniversary of AKJOHNSTON, a company with offices in California and New York that deals with experiential marketing and production. The project was created both for internal use and to show customers and potential customers the company's ability to know how to communicate with the most original tools, offering an opportunity to increase its brand awareness through an advergame.

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Within the video game, characters (CEO Austin Johnston and his two dogs), the settings (office, city and desert) but also the customer's installations have been faithfully recreated in pixel art, which fully enter the video game, in the area created ad hoc, the “bunker” in which the company's most iconic works are shown.