How we came to be
Back in 2016 I was going to a new school to get a kickstart on my field of study, I've always wanted to learn computers and more specifically game development and design. The school had a promising curriculum and the teacher seemed really cool, so I decided I would attend. Without saying too much the class really lacked a structure and made it really hard to learn without doing it independently. The class really began to divide themselves into little groups that would try to work through projects and learn as a group. Towards the end of the year we were tasked with a Capstone project, it was to encompass all we learned throughout the year and to see what we can work on for the upcoming year. Luckily my initial idea was ambitious enough for the teacher to allow a group of 4 people rather than only allowing groups of 2. Towards the tail end of our senior year I had talked to many people and formed a dev team and was very excited to get started making games for people to enjoy.
The fall
But not everything goes to plan and one by one people started dropping the project. After gradutation I had built a dev team of a dozen people, but one thing remainded missing, we didn't have an artist. I thought it was fine but then I found it was not so fine. I was approaching the first limitation that I had encountered. So I scrambled looking for an artist, any artist at this point would do, unable to find one I began to feel disappointed and like I had failed. I was giving up. But a flurry of new ideas came in, I didn't need an artist right this moment to design systems and make a game that could potentially catch the interest of an artist wanting to work with the project. Unfortunately that time never came and slowly we began to lose interest again and again through every road block. Whether it be the lack of an artist, being slammed at work, or having so much college work it was even funny. The project had fallen to the wayside once more.
Finding my footing once more during some breaks in school that lined up with Dan. We started at it again, even releasing a mobile game on the Google Playstore. It was called Jump Jump and we published it under the name Syoto Studios. The game was relatively simple and I thought that was really all we needed because we needed to just release something, to finish something. This was a major turning point. Though Jump Jump is no longer available on the app store it was a fun experience and it taught me that I really did want to do this for a living, having positive feedback from family and friends was inspiring. Unfortunately issues came up again. We began school again, started working again, and still we had no artist, and no money to put towards decent models to finish the game the way we would like to have and so Jump Jump was removed from the store and we didn't look back.
I have designed quite a few games since then. Most of which ended up being way too big in scope. With each passing idea they got smaller with better designs overall. Understanding that a game is out of reach is important, its important to know what you can and can't do. For this reason we participated in a makeshift game jam, we gave ourselves 48 hours and we built a tower defence game. It wasn't amazing, in fact it barely worked. It had some art that worked just well enough to not look terrible together. It looked bad, played a little better than that, but it was finished. I was proud once more. A game that we had successfully started and finished. Another large boost in confidence. So I started planning a new game. This one was much more manageable and we got parts working, actually we got some pretty big features working but ultimately we deemed the game too much of a hassle and shelved yet another game.
Looking towards the future
Over the course of these last few years I have learned and grown a lot both in terms of creativity, networking, and most importantly design. I've realized things that are important in games and really went at trying to find what it is that makes people connect with the games they do. I've learned why I enjoy games and how I can use that to further my understanding to make every game I design from here on the best experience it can be.
I want to make it very clear that we are here to make games, tell stories, and build communities around them. For this reason we do not have any intentions as of right now to stick to a single IP. We would love to work with the community on games and decisions pertaining to them.
Thanks for reading! I hope you'll join our community and stick around for more updates.