Meet the Interns Designing an Arctic Fighting Game with Intense Music
High school interns at foundry10 explore an area of their choosing through a hands-on project of their own design. Roanin and Arthur made a video game.
High school interns at foundry10 explore an area of their choosing through a hands-on project of their own design. We provide materials, an industry-specific mentor for guidance and the youth are responsible for getting as far as possible in their work through the duration of the internship. We hope to learn how passion develops in youth when they get real exposure to their fields of interest.
Roanin and Arthur are students at Big Picture High School in Bellevue. For their high school internship with foundry10 under the mentorship of Robert Rood, they designed a fighting game set in the snow with music that intensifies as the conflict grows. Read on to learn more about these two talented students and their foundry10 intern project!
What is one thing people would be surprised to learn about you?
Roanin: I was born in Florida.
Arthur: That I am present in the room. Despite how tall I am, I have mastered the ability to go almost completely unnoticed. It always gives me a chuckle when people suddenly notice the behemoth in the room and for a brief moment you can see the pure shock in their face.
What are you currently reading/watching/playing?
Roanin: One game I’ve been playing for a couple years now is “Sky: Children of the Light.” The developers put a lot of work into updating the game with new stuff frequently so it never gets boring, and it’s a great game for just hanging out with friends. It’s also from the same developers that made “Journey,” which is my favorite game ever made.
Arthur: I am a big fan of the fighting game genre. The two games I’ve been playing the most are Guilty Gear Strive and Under Night In-Birth.
Describe your intern project at foundry10.
Roanin: We made a top down 4-player game where players have to push each other off of crumbling tiles to be the last one standing. Aside from pushing, there are also bombs scattered across the maps that you can pick up and use to explode big chunks of tiles. You can also take advantage of falling tiles to trap your opponents. The music gets increasingly more intense the closer someone gets to winning. Each of the playable characters has their own unique designs like parkas and goggles fitting for the Arctic environment of the game. The idea came when Arthur told me about it, then we turned it into a group project and started working on it.
What challenges did you face working on this project? How did you overcome them?
Roanin: When I first started working on the music I was struggling to make something I thought was fitting for the game, so I stopped for a while to focus more on the pixel art which ended up being a good idea. Then I came back to the music later on and made something I liked.
Arthur: During the start of the project we originally planned using Gamemaker Studio 2. However, Gamemaker lacked many good resources that we could use for our project. So we made the choice to switch over to using the Unity engine and though Unity was much more difficult to start out with, it was way more efficient in the long term.
What did you learn about yourself during this internship?
Roanin: I was already passionate when it comes to the type of work I was doing for this project, such as art and music, and this was just a good opportunity to put those skills into use and make something cool.
Arthur: I learned what it takes to get into a flow state. I discovered my process to getting into the flow state is not like a light switch, it’s exponential. Once I start getting into a flow, my mind just gets more and more absorbed into the project the further into flow I get. Eventually it builds up to a point where my physical self isn’t even in my mind, all that remains is the project.
What lessons will you take away from this internship that you can use in other parts of your life?
Roanin: I can spend so much time on something to the point where I start to not enjoy it anymore. So a lesson I can take away is that I need to be more patient, and also that taking a break to work on something else and then coming back later could end up making something significantly better.
Arthur: During the project the main things I learned are related to the tools I was using. I am someone who likes messing around with a bunch of stuff, but Unity has always been one of the more difficult tools out there for me to figure out. With this internship, I was able learn the work flow for the engine and behind C# as well. Finally being able to use a game engine in this way opens up new opportunities for future game projects I would like to work on.
What advice do you have for other teens who want to create a video game?
Roanin: Just try to make something you genuinely think is a cool idea, and if you can find someone who shares that interest it could make the experience a lot more enjoyable.
Arthur: Ask yourself what is the core idea of your project? Make sure that you have a clear idea of what you want in the end. If you can’t summarize it quickly, it’s a poor project. It’s okay to have fun with many ideas. There were a lot of ideas in our project that never made it into the final game. When choosing what is important and what is not, don’t be too generous.
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