Team Badgers on Bikes
By Rose Briggs (Programmer) and Cooper Bulmash (Lead Artist)
Team Badgers on Bikes bonding in Unity Hall.
What’s that in the sky? It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No… it’s definitely a bird… it is James Bird!!
Going into the home stretch of SIP, team Badgers on Bikes is knee deep in production as we continue to push towards the beta build of our game Drop off Dragon! We are working out kinks, fixing bugs, and finalizing our last levels while we get more and more feedback from playtesters both inside and outside the program. Our game has come a long way in the last couple weeks and we are all incredibly excited to see where it will go in the coming two weeks before release!
One of our keys to keeping our development cycle moving is our team dynamic that thrives on bad jokes. We have a handful of running bits and jokes that have snowballed over the course of the whole internship, developing into the entire soul of the team. We have handled some of the most difficult roadblocks with ease by keeping each other’s spirits high and picking one another up when we stumble. This team dynamic has made the process of production great since giving feedback feels less like criticism of work and more like encouragement to make the piece as good as it possibly can be. Keeping it lighthearted and fun reminds us that this is a creative process and sometimes things need to be reworked.
Many ideas for how things in the game should work have come out of these inside jokes! For example, a joke character we came up with early in development named Skele-Tony came back recently as the collectables scattered around the level. Additionally, we made in universe versions of each team member which later became part of a credits cinematic. Adding both these elements and several of our other jokes to the game has gone a long way in adding soul to the world it takes place in! A family of Jane Wax here, a laughing Jake mirror there, and suddenly there is life and personality to the world and it is more than just an empty platforming challenge.
We are all so lucky to have this opportunity here at MassDiGI and are incredibly proud of the work we have done so far! With our release date rapidly approaching we are very excited to show you all what we have been cooking up with Drop off Dragon!!
Finally, a word from our producer James: “Bird.”
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Join us on July 29 at the JMAC in Worcester. More info coming soon.
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Team Alley Cats
By Dan Lu (Producer)
“Big Cookie”
Do you hear meowing? Screeching? Sounds of equal joy and despair? If you do, don’t worry about it—that’s just a regular production day for the Alley Cats team, who are working on a puzzle platformer called Licky Thief.
Licky Thief is about a leopard gecko, named Gecky, who breaks into this rich hawk’s mansion to steal back ancestral gecko artifacts. It’s made up of several short levels where you play as Gecky, using your tongue as a grappling hook to bypass several heist-style security measures (spotlights, lasers, cameras, and more).
Gecky is a character we’ve all put our hearts into, and I’m not just saying that as the lead writer. I can see this from the way one of our programmers gushed after implementing a (completely useless yet precious) mechanic that allows Gecky to make a talking motion. The artists are also having lots of fun adding to the worldbuilding, from pouring hours into perfecting a comic cutscene to coming up with fun level props for environmental storytelling.
As the team’s producer, I have had the pleasure of watching our team dynamic evolve from nervously cordial to tight-knit and deeply collaborative. There are fake rivalries that lead to funny banter; a programmer and an artist switched places for half a day, resulting in MS Paint art assets that will live forever in our hearts (though not in our game).
We have a daily icebreaker ritual where we try to ask a new hypothetical question every day, and we try to spend at least one of our three daily breaks playing a game together like Gartic Phone or OpenGuessr. We have so many inside jokes that mundane words like “big” or “small” might send any one of us down a spiral of despair. To many outsiders, we may seem like we have all lost our minds. But that is the beauty of production.
As we enter the final stretch of development, stress levels are definitely mounting. But I feel relieved and very grateful for my team’s cohesion and determination to uplift each other and reach our goals. Unfortunately, one of our team members dropped the (red) ball when he was too scared to order the Big Cookie. It’s okay if you don’t know what that means. You probably don’t want to anyway.
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Join us at the annual intercollegiate art competition! Info here.
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After a lot of time and effort two past MassDigi Game Challenge winners, GigaSword (2021) and FloraFiora (2016) have finally launched. Please play them!
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If you’re in or around Worcester this summer, come by WPI Unity Hall 235 on July 31 between 4:30p and 8p to check out the limited debut of MELT, an immersive experience realized at WPI this summer in collaboration with MassDigi and Joe Square Art.
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We’ll be at WPI’s booth #10032. Drop by and say hello!
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Great people, great games, great times! Join us at our annual Made in MA at PAX East Party! RSVP here.
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Check out Boston GameDev Week here and be sure to join us on May 8th for Made in MA!
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