The game development club: A culmination of coders, digital artists, and music composers
Game developers create a 2D pixelated RPG game during their meetings.
March 31, 2022
After school in room 4202, a club meets. There is one student who is leading a team of game developers to create a 2D pixelated RPG game, not just coding it, but planning and directing other team members and even making music for the game. That student is junior Peter Schwendeman.
Schwendeman joined the game development club at Huron during his freshman year. Before, he had always been interested in video games.
“I’ve played games since I was younger,” Schwendeman said. “But I’ve always wondered how they work behind the scenes and what goes on. How are the players controlled? And how do my button presses interact? What’s going on on the screen?”
In the club, he was able to start his own game project with a friend of his. This was Project Odyssey. The team grew in size from two to eight from coders to digital artists to music composers. However, the game doesn’t come without challenges.
“Making a game is a lot of work,” Schwendeman said. “So you have to keep motivated for a long time. You have to make your assets, your music, code, put it all in the game design levels and sometimes you can get into slumps of working because you don’t want to work on it anymore.”
Despite the difficulties, he still loves what the club is able to do with Huron students.
“[I love] bonding and pulling together the different creative aspects of Huron,” Schwendeman said. “Game design takes a lot of creativity, including writers, artists, programmers and game designers. So I hope it continues to draw from the different creative sides of Huron and help them bond together and form strong friendships.”
