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!”

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