Fresh Eyes on Derby!
This past spring Derby, our favorite roller-skating dog, was put under the care of fresh eyes with guidance from one of the original creators. The new team of students set their sights on solidifying the core gameplay and finally getting Derby out the door and into the wild.
In case you don't know what Derby is: originally developed as a high-speed rogue-like movement shooter. You play as a roller-skating Blue Heeler armed with a tennis ball launcher, fighting waves of robotic enemies and stacking power-ups. It was a small game started by students in the Intermediate Game Design course at West Virginia University and was then pitched to the nonprofit studio back in May 2024.
Derby Gets Rolling
One of the first things we did once we picked up Derby was develop a new movement system that called back to a founding influence for the game, Jet Set Radio. We had to change the movement controller to allow the player more control and added a new ability: jumping. With Derby's new ability she could now gain height and access what we believe is one of the coolest forms of movement in video games: grind rails. After testing these new features we felt we had a solid foundation for the rest of the game to be built around.
Derby Gets A New Trick
This past summer we added a new ability for Derby, wall running, to add to her bag of tricks. Additionally, we took on the task of organizing our now 2-year old project to hopefully allow us to develop faster and smoother as we move into the fall and bring on new students into the project.
Derby Gets a Demo Soon™️
This Fall we'll be putting out a demo for Derby where you can play for the first time and give us feedback. Once we're ready to roll we'll let you know exactly when you'll be able to download the demo and meet our lovable roller-skating Blue Heeler yourself.