Senior Game Design Student on the Process of Game Creation

Senior Game Design student, Seven Coleman ’25, interviewed with the Champlain Art Gallery about his game Pikki Rikki, a charming platformer about “a bunny that just can’t jump!” In Pikki Rikki, you play as a bunny who uses plants to maneuver through 15 stages across three separate worlds.

Pikki Rikki was developed for the Playdate console, a colorful, handheld device with a unique design that fits in your pocket. Coleman spoke about how his mother had pre-ordered the Playdate for Coleman’s birthday, and after his own investigation, he realized the potential of such a console and its one-of-a-kind features. While exploring available games and possible, he noticed a distinct lack of his favorite game genre in the Playdate game market: platformers.

A platformer is a game that’s main mechanic involves moving a character across obstacles through jumping, climbing, and other acrobatic maneuvers. However, this key aspect of most platformers was a big hurdle in Pikki Rikki’s development. Coleman said, “As the camera in the gamespace is stationary, and the tiling of the ground itself moves backward as the player moves forward, I found that within my time of development and my knowledge of coding and developing for the Playdate, it’d take a little too long to worry about giving the illusion of extra verticality.”

Eventually, using the console’s crank feature, an analog controller that is a key component of most games on the Playdate, Coleman was able to turn this setback into a cool feature for players to enjoy that blended his platformer idea with concepts similar to strategy and puzzle games. ”[…] I decided just what the game would really be, and how to make my own limitations into something fun for the player!”

Once he implemented the strategy aspects to move a character through a platformer without jumping, Coleman employed his skills in game design, art, level design, sound design, marketing, and more to finish putting Pikki Rikki together. During the creation of the game, Coleman received a lot of support from other Playdate developers and Panic staff, and he even designed the entire game from the comfort of his own bedroom.

Getting to the Finish Line

Coleman’s dedication to this game is exemplary of the skills and attitudes that Champlain hopes to impart in students. The multidisciplinary focus of Champlain’s curriculum gives students like Coleman access to not just one set of skills, but imparts a desire to take the initiative to go beyond the classroom using what they have learned. Coleman underscores the value of the Upside-Down curriculum in his own work, saying that, “With classes that I’ve taken in the past, like Visual Communication, UI/UX, and Atmospheric Design too, these skills I’ve gained apply across much, much more than just game design too, and have been interdisciplinarily intertwined with other classes not intertwined with the Game Studio.”

Despite the roadblocks and the level of effort and time that was needed to complete his project, Coleman was able to create a final product that encompasses all that he has learned both in and out of the classroom. His biggest piece of advice?

Check out the full interview on the Art Gallery’s blog, and take a look at Pikki Rikki here!