“Give ’em the Axe, the Axe, the Axe. Give ’em the Axe, the Axe, the Axe. Give ’em the Axe, give ’em the Axe, give ’em the Axe — where? Right in the neck, the neck, the neck.”
— Stanford Axe Yell, est. 1899
Synopsis
Our game is a 2D platformer about a Stanford freshman who promised their brother they’d bring the Axe home.
A year ago, Cal won the 130th Big Game by three points. A Cal alum on the school’s board of trustees is a billionaire who pledged a $200 million donation conditional on the Axe staying at Cal in perpetuity. To make sure it stayed permanent, they sealed it in a concrete-and-glass display case bolted to the floor of their trophy room. No more annual handoff. No more Big Game tradition. The Axe was theirs forever.
The protagonist’s older brother was the Stanford captain that year. He took the loss harder than anyone else. Three months later, on a stretch of 280 he’d driven a thousand times, his car went off the road. He didn’t survive.
Our protagonist is a freshman now, walking the same campus their brother walked, sitting in the same dorm rooms, looking at the same photos on the wall of Arrillaga. The Axe was the thing their brother talked about most in the last weeks of his life. Next year. We’re getting it back next year. He never got to.
The game opens up at the Dish, on a Sunday in October, with our protagonist hiking alone trying to figure out what to do with all of this. Wandering off the loop, they end up at the Philosopher’s Cave, an obscure dirt overhang behind a stand of oak trees. Inside, scratched into the rock wall, is a partial map. It shows a route from Stanford to Cal that runs entirely underground, annotated in handwriting that looks about a hundred years old. Whoever drew it never finished using it….
The Stages
Act 1: The Dish
This acts as the tutorial with gentle platforming. Players learn to run, jump, and dash across windy hilltops and weathered fence lines. Inside the cave, our protagonist reads the map. Underneath the map, faint and scratched in fresher handwriting from sometime in the 1980s, is a single line: We tried. They caught us. Don’t get caught. By the end of the act, our protagonist is hiking back down toward campus with the map folded in their pocket and a plan: wait for Big Game morning, when the campus is too loud and too crowded for anyone to notice one freshman slipping through it.
Act 2: Big Game on Campus
Big Game morning, the campus is alive — tailgaters, marching band, alumni in cardinal everywhere. Our protagonist has to cross campus aboveground to reach the entrance to the Stanford tunnels, a forgotten access hatch behind Memorial Church. Rooftop traversal across the Quad and the residences, staying out of sight of campus security. Everything is energetic, sunlit, and fast.
Act 3: The Tunnels
This is where the platforming gets harder. Steam vents, broken catwalks, and locked doors fill the tunnels. Each tunnel section has its own theme. We’re still working on the full architecture but here’s some examples: utility tunnels first, then abandoned research tunnels, and a stretch nobody has been in since the 1970s.Down there, behind a collapsed wall, our protagonist finds the second half of the map. It was carried that far in 1986 by the last team that tried, and they had to leave it behind when something went wrong. The route to Cal continues from here, under the bay.
Act 4: Memorial Stadium
Surfacing under the Cal stadium, our protagonist enters territory that’s been waiting for them. The Berkeley tunnels are wetter, older, and patrolled by Kal (Cal football players and security tipped off that something’s happening underground). Dodging them, climbing up through the foundations, and slipping into the trophy room is the first half. Smashing the case open triggers every alarm in the building. Then comes the escape, with the Axe slowing every jump and dash, and Kal patrols pouring in from every direction.
Tone
Across the runtime, we want the player to move through three emotional beats: wonder, tension, and triumph. Wonder belongs to the Dish, tension to the tunnels, and triumph to the stadium. Underneath all of those is grief, which is what gives the triumph its weight. By the time our protagonist holds the Axe up at the end, they’re not just doing it for school spirit — they’re doing it for their late brother.
We’re leaning into Stanford’s mythology. Big Game has been going for over a hundred and thirty years. The Axe itself has been stolen and re-stolen and lost in train station bathrooms and pulled out of trophy cases by undergrads in masks. Our game sits in that lineage, but with a more personal stake. It’s a tall tale about a kid trying to keep a promise. For narrative delivery, we’re using environmental detail and short journal entries from the protagonist at the start of each level.
Setting
The world is Stanford, present day, rendered in pixel art with a Stanford palette: cardinal red, sandstone, palm green, golden hill grass, and red tile roofs.
We want players who’ve walked across Main Quad to recognize the arches, and players who’ve hiked the Dish to recognize the radio telescope silhouette. Hidden locations like the Philosopher’s Cave and the deep tunnels are grounded in (sometimes) real Stanford lore.
Cal gets rendered a little colder. Concrete instead of sandstone, floodlights instead of golden hour, blue and gold instead of cardinal and beige. A lot of the storytelling happens through that visual contrast. When the player is at Cal, the setting should evoke a lot more tension and suspense since that’s the final act.
Throughout the game, our protagonist carries one piece of color with them: their brother’s old #14 jersey, tied around their waist. It’s a small visual anchor across every screen, and a quiet reminder of why they’re doing any of this.
Gameplay
The game is going to be tight 2D platforming. You can run, jump, climb, and drop. Our protagonist has a small move set, and the levels are built around mastering it. We were inspired by the game Celeste where the platforming is hard but fair, and where every death teaches you something.
Once our protagonist picks up the Axe at the end of Act 4, every jump from that point on is slightly shorter and every dash slightly less reaching. We’re rebuilding the final escape level around this slowed movement, so players who’ve mastered the protagonist’s normal feel have to relearn it for one level. That constraint is the climax and the player physically should feel what they’ve been carrying the whole game.
Failing a section will be common, so we are going to have frequent and forgiving checkpoints. Death is part of learning a level, with checkpoints placed every screen or two. We aren’t trying to make a frustrating game.
The story is going to be delivered through short journal entries open each level, with environmental signage and graffiti throughout, plus one or two longer scenes between acts. Old photos of the brother surface in thedeepest tunnels, dropped by previous attempts. No dialogue trees, and no cutscenes longer than a few seconds.
Who this is for
This is a game for people who like tight 2D platformers and also those who went to Stanford or would like to explore the Stanford world and stories.
Platforming is the primary draw. Anyone who liked Celeste will find the moment-to-moment gameplay familiar. Stanford lore is the secondary draw. Players who recognize the locations get a layer of meaning that the platforming alone doesn’t provide. Underneath both is a story about a kid wholost their brother and is trying to do one thing right.
Players who don’t know Stanford will still have a fun game about a kid following an old map through tunnels into a stadium. We aren’t trying to make a game that rewards Stanford knowledge insteadof requiring it.
Appendix
Individual Submissions:
