Welcome back everybody! I am excited to kick off the project blog for Advanced Game Studio with the announcement of our class project. This semester we are building on the success of last spring by once again assembling the class into one development studio to design and deliver the sequel to last year’s game..
This course was first launched in the spring of 2018 to give students the opportunity to work on developing a video game over a longer design cycle than what most courses typically offer. It is unique within the offerings available to students through IDeATe’s game design curriculum in that here students will focus on developing just one product across the entire semester.
Also unique to this class – the students work collectively to create a single project, with each student responsible for their own portion of development. In this way, we are directly replicating the processes of the industry by standing up our own indie game studio. We have teams set up for art, engineering, design, and production, and plenty of opportunities for cross-collaboration.
This “all-in” approach was implemented last year when the class was invited to create a virtual reality experience to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Buggy Races that are part of Carnegie Mellon’s annual Spring Carnival event. Sadly the pandemic altered these plans, but we were able to resume our class and our game online, releasing Buggy All-Stars at the end of the semester. Despite the disruption, their heart always remained in the work.
This semester, I am excited to announce that our project will be the sequel – Buggy All-Stars 2! (Bigger! Badder! Buggier!).
We are taking the buggies beyond the traditional track and exploring campus in a wild, family friendly racing game. New buggies, new locations, and a stunning new art style. We are once again targeting a browser-based game using WebGL, so that everyone and anyone can join in the fun. And we are targeting this year’s Spring Carnival (online) to showcase our first tracks.
Check back often as the team releases weekly progress updates, feature overviews, interviews, and as we post opportunities to participate in our playtesting.