Buckle up, girlypops! It’s Jane, the lead developer at Funny Fintan Softworks, and I’m here to kickstart the first… ✨Dev Storytime✨ In this update, I’ll be talking all about how development on Don’t Stop, Girlypop! started and what it’s been like up until this point. It’s been a wild ride and I’m excited to finally tell you all about it!
Our story begins in March 2020, when I was around 15 years old and I was taking a class called Tech Graphics. As part of the class, we had to do a mandated project and a personal project, kind of like a workshop class. For your personal project, you could pick anything you wanted to do. Some students did woodwork, some kids made skateboards, some made music albums, and a few even did whittling! All that mattered was that you were making something and you were managing the project yourself. My friend came to me and said, “Wanna make a game?”
And that’s how the girlypop journey began!
The game was first known only as “Untitled First Person Shooter.” Super original name, I know. Then it became Project Snowtiger, which came from the fact that my sister had a snow tiger plushie that she loved and that she just called Snowtiger. Yeah, coming up with super original names totally runs in my family. Fun Fact: The name Project Snowtiger became the inspiration for the name Tigris Nix, the evil corporation in Don’t Stop, Girlypop!
The game was known as Project Snowtiger for almost all of its first year, but then in December I was searching the Internet for cool words and came across “incolatus.” I read that it meant “a short stay somewhere” or a “sojourn,” which felt perfect because the game was originally going to be about dying and temporarily occupying different bodies. As time went on though and the game started to gain more recognition, I had people coming to me saying that wasn’t the meaning of “incolatus” at all! It turns out “incolatus” had a lot of different interpretations and pronunciations. Based on that and the fact that the game had changed so much thematically from the original concept, we decided as a team to solidify our tagline “Don’t Stop, Girlypop!” as the final name for the game.
Along this whole journey, I’ve been engaging with members of my local game development scene.
First of all, I want to start off by saying I love the Australian game development scene. I used to be vice chair of an organisation called WAGIC (the Western Australian Games Industry Council), which is where I met our producer Caitlin. I’m passionate about advocating for game development in my local community and try to attend as many local events as possible, like Tokyo Alley and Pixel Expo. I attribute my success to this community and the amazing people around me who have been so willing to help!
In fact, my first time showing off the game was at a local event called the Perth Games Festival, which was hosted by Let’s Make Games (the original name of WAGIC). This was my first proper introduction to the game development community in Western Australia. For context, where I live is one of the most remote cities in the world! Perth is the only real city in Western Australia and you’d have to travel about 28 hours by car to reach the next nearest city called Adelaide. We’re literally on the other side of the continent with all of the other cities in Australia. For that reason, we’re a tight-knit community and the support has been unbelievable!
I met our producer Caitlin back when I was 17 years old and Caitlin was working for Screenwest, which is a government agency that provides funding for art projects throughout Australia. I wanted to get a grant to help fund the making of Don’t Stop, Girlypop!, so I was meeting with Amelia, who worked at Screen Australia, and I ended up also seeing Caitlin, since Screen Australia and Screenwest work together. I asked if Caitlin would be willing to mentor me to get a Screen Australia grant and she agreed! She would spend hours every week looking at all of the documents I was submitting and working through my application with me. My application ended up being successful in large part thanks to Caitlin’s hard work and invaluable guidance. I also received a lot of help from Nick Lowe at Hungry Sky and Vee Pendergrast at CODE NZ throughout this process, so big shout out to them as well!
Since then, I’ve met so many wonderful people in the games industry throughout Australia!
I have so many amazing stories that I could share. One that stands out in my mind that I think is really emblematic of what the industry is like here was when I was to SXSW Sydney last year. I met another developer called Ally McLean Hennessy, who is currently working on an awesome game called Mystiques: Haunted Antiques. I ended up catching COVID during the event and, even though we had only known each other for 4 days, Ally brought a care package full of masks, soup, medicine, and all sorts of other super useful stuff to my hotel. Being in an unfamiliar city and being trapped in my hotel room with COVID, let me tell you I really needed that care package!!!
Jane Fiona (left) with Caitlin Lomax, Co-chair of WAGIC (right) and Samantha Rowe MLC (centre) at the launch of WAGIC in 2024.
I was inspired by all of the support I’d received from my local community to join WAGIC and I’ve been campaigning for the government to provide more funding to local game developers ever since!
I remember another one of my mentors Stuart Scott, whose background is in business, mentioning how people in the games industry are so friendly, and that really stuck with me because it’s so true. Games are like a combination of art and tech, but they’re more art in my view. No one in the indie development scene is out to make buckets of money and you can really feel it. If you wanted to make money, you wouldn’t be making video games. It’s honestly a miracle that games ever get made, considering how complicated and ridiculous they are!
I’m not going to lie, game development is really hard. You have to work long hours and there was a period of time where I couldn’t even pay myself for 7 months. The thing that keeps me going is that the people I’m mutually enduring this experience of making games with are so lovely and supportive. What I’m trying to say is, if you’re an aspiring game developer, then put yourself out there. You’ll find that the people who are making games will most likely be just like you.
As an indie developer, I’ve had to face a lot of challenges trying to get my game off the ground. The greatest challenge on the girlypop journey so far has been trying to run a business while simultaneously creating an art project. Getting involved in budgeting, legal discussions, marketing, and finding a publisher can feel overwhelming at times. Turning my passion into a job was really difficult, but I also feel so lucky that I’ve been able to do that!
So what is my passion? What do I want players to feel when they play Don’t Stop, Girlypop!?
As corny as it sounds, I want to make people happy. I love when games just make you chuckle a bit, not because they’re funny but because they’re doing something really clever or satisfying that you find fun. For us as a dev team, no matter what we put into the game, it all comes down to “Is it fun?” We’ve cut a lot of cool concepts and features because they weren’t fun. I hope that clicking on things in Don’t Stop, Girlypop! and making them explode will be satisfying.
I wanted to dive into what other games inspired Don’t Stop, Girlypop! but this storytime is already waaaaaaaaaaay too long!! I’ll be releasing a second part to this next week so I hope you enjoyed this update and be on the lookout for the Girlypop Journey Part 2!!!!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2610650/Dont_Stop_Girlypop/
Click the buttons below to join our Discord and follow us on social media for the latest updates on Don’t Stop, Girlypop! ❤
