Lil Gator Game
1. How did the idea for Lil Gator Game come to be?
Scott wanted to make a silly little animal game, so he prototyped exactly that, and Robin and I piled on to help make it real!
2. What inspired the decision to make it through a child's point of view?
I don't think a 30-year-old MC running around a park playing pretend would have landed as well.
The three of us have fond memories of climbing through elaborate wooden playgrounds in times of old. More than one classic cartoon explores a group of children with free reign in an unsupervised dreamland. It's the ubiquitous child fantasy and yet not something we've often seen in video games!
3. Why did you choose an animal cast?
We like animals!
4. What were the biggest inspirations for Lil Gator Game?
As with all open-world games released between 2017 and the end of time, Breath of the Wild was a huge inspiration for the gameplay.
Stylistically we looked at other silly animal games like A Short Hike and Frog Detective.
If I was ever stuck on the writing, I would watch an old episode of Spongebob or replay Pajama Sam.
5. Was it difficult to come up with quests considering the enemies are inanimate?
This is kinda like asking me if my romantic comedy script is suffering from a lack of jump scares.
If your game has a complex combat system, you write quests about fighting monsters. Our game is about playing pretend and being a silly little guy, so I wrote funny jokes and used my imagination.
Plenty of quest ideas had to be cut for time or complexity, but no, I was never held up by a lack of enemy AI.
6. What — if anything — inspired the story's concept between siblings and ageing?
Scott and I both have little brothers and understand the struggle of trying to foster a relationship with them while simultaneously shipping off to forge a life of your own. It's a down-to-earth struggle for a low-stakes game. It can feel like the end of the world even when we know it isn't.
7. What was the team's favourite aspect about developing Lil Gator Game?
I love my friends!!!!!! Working with my friends and sharing ideas with my friends in a casual and enriching manner instead of receiving my tasks through a series of tubes and being a face in the crowd is the greatest thing in the universe!!!!!
8. Now that you're out the other side with more experience, how do you think the game would be different if you started development now?
We did a pretty good job of staying within our means and leaning into our strengths for a first try at a commercial release. Most of what we learned was about organization and delegation, at which we were/are all frighteningly poor.
That being said, there was never a time when any of us didn't have something to do.
Given the exact same time frame, I don't think the game would be different in ways that were noticeable to anyone but us! 😅
9. What are you taking from Lil Gator Game into your future projects?
We were friends before, but Lil Gator has taught us a lot about how to work as a team. When to talk about things or save them for later, what to focus on, what we're good at vs what we like to do, how to egg each other on and stay motivated.
Technical skills, of course. Scott was already a Unity wizard, but now he has even more tricks for making beautiful art on a GPU budget. I discovered an instant affinity for Blender, so we know to put me on the front lines of modelling next time. Robin used the dynamic soundtrack as a chance to experiment with expressing the same motif in a ton of different instruments and styles.
Side note: Robin used to live outside of the USA, so one thing we're very excited NOT to take with us is dealing with intercontinental tax documentation!
10. Now that the game is out, what's next for MegaWobble?
It's between becoming real estate moguls or running off to join the circus. We haven't decided yet.
Lil Gator Game
