The game development club has a mix of artists and programmers who use the game engine Godot to create video games, club president and senior Everett Lee said.
The club was formed as a place to foster game development in MHS because there wasn’t a place where people could specifically work on video games, Lee said.
“There are plenty of coding and art clubs and whatnot out there, but there weren’t really any clubs that combined that,” Lee said. “When the club formed last year, it kind of created a place for this interest to form.”
This year, the club is experimenting with a new collaborative idea, Lee said. It’s called the club game, and the game itself currently has no name, but everyone gets to contribute their own ideas, he added.
“We have a giant document and a list of responsibilities,” Lee said. “This person’s doing art for this, this person’s doing animations for this, and this person’s programming the movement or whatnot.”
The game is a metroidvania, which is a 2D platformer that has abilities to help you progress through the story, Lee said.
“Our main mechanic is going to be a grappling hook,” Lee said. “They (the club members) really loved the grappling hook idea, so we decided to roll with it.”
The club wanted it to be a fast paced action-packed game, sort of like Hollow Knight, where the character’s fast, movement is fast, and fighting is fast, Lee said.
“You kind of want to get through levels as fast as possible,” Lee said. “You do combos and other stuff, so that you rack up points and speed.”
Most, if not all, club members have contributed to the ideas because there were several brainstorming sessions, Lee said.
“Right now, we’re mostly waiting on the movement mechanics to be finished before we start working on level design and enemies, but everyone’s working,” Lee said.
The club wanted to have a final product to show off, Lee said. With the individual games the members make, the club can’t just take a member of the club’s game and present it as a game created by all of the members, he added.
“With this (the club game), we can kind of have a project that the game development club can call its own,” Lee said. “It combines everyone’s effort, helps foster teamwork within the club, and people get to talk to each other.”
The club also has other game development activities they are planning, such as a pass-the-game event, Lee said.
“It is where one person works on a game, and they pass the file over to another person without saying anything,” Lee said. “It just goes around a loop and totally becomes chaotic.”
Sophomore Ben Nguyen doesn’t have to spend too much time working on stuff for the club, he said.
“I never find myself putting out my actual time (on weekdays) in order to do the club stuff,” Nguyen said.
Joining the game development club is a win-win, you don’t lose anything and there aren’t many expectations, Nguyen said.
“If you just want to learn and want to do what you want and have fun, there’s no drawback to it,” Nguyen said. “You might as well just join and see how you do before deciding you don’t want to join at all.”
Game development is really easy and super fun, Lee said.
“You don’t have to make an amazing AAA game,” Lee said. “You can just be creative, let your thoughts run, and make something that you’re proud of. If you’re not interested in programming, you could always work on art and music for learning as well, and I’m sure there’ll be plenty of people who will help you out with the programming aspect.”
Senior Kyle Ciurczak thinks game development is truly something that’s fun and pretty easy to get into, he said.
”Once you start dipping your toes in and figuring out how it works, I think you’ll fall in love with game development,” Ciurczak said.
