The Game Design & Art Collaboration (GDA) spends its Fall quarter in fierce suspense as a handful of members work tirelessly to answer a single burning question:
What game will GDA make next?
The winner of a vote held between our members’ game pitches near the end of November sparks the beginning of development for GDA’s Mock Studio. As our organization’s largest operation, Mock Studio annually offers UC Santa Cruz students the unique opportunity to produce one full game with their peers in a large-scale, student-run dev team.
How do we do it?
You’re now reading the beginning of the 2024-2025 GDA Mock Studio Development Log, written by yours truly: Sai. Carry alongside us as we explore another year of GDA’s Mock Studio to learn the ins and outs of student development!
SPRINT 0: Pitch Season
This Fall quarter, a whopping 48 pitchers fully fleshed out a total of 17 stunning game pitches for GDA—record-high numbers!! These individuals worked with officers & each other through numerous rounds of feedback to develop a game pitch with written and visual components that communicated their visions to GDA at large. Our pitchers presented their work on Friday, November 15th!
A vote was held to decide which singular game of the many incredible options would be full-sent in production. It was damn near impossible to predict the winner between the ever-shifting target audience within GDA and the baffling level of polish amongst our pitches.
What was it going to be?
Were we going to paint the city with MURALis, a 2.5D platformer-skater where you’d launch your enemies into one another to mix and spread paint?
Or maybe we’d work together to heal our sick cat in Well Witches, an enchanting 2D bullet hell and potentially GDA’s first multiplayer.
Perhaps we’d be building our DREAMDECK to take on the monster haunting our town in this deckbuilding & life sim hybrid!
We could’ve played as a maniacal rat mage, using the rowdy RTS mechanics of RATTACK to unleash rat swarms against the Ivory Order.
Would Metapathic’s ethereal environments and movement-based dungeon crawl take the cake as GDA’s first fully 3D game?
We might’ve pulled on Doll’s strings in a battle with ourselves, trading our humanity for strength in this 2D steampunk Metroidvania.
What about stepping into the unsettling liminal space of MALLGOTHIC, a 2D horror game set in a mall where something just… wasn’t quite right?
GDA’s next game was a mystery we were itching to solve, as was Twisted Tale’s 2D murder mystery reimagination of the Grimm Fairytales.
Red Badge—a philosophical 2D errand simulator—was pitched as a military ‘anti-shooter’ for its themes of oppression and anti-war ideologies.
We could’ve also chilled out with Mafio’s 2D restaurant sim… or so we thought before the game switched up with intense card battles.
We prepped our tickets for a chance to hop on The Ferryman Express, a 2D visual novel where we’d escort souls to Elysium, Asphodel, and Tartarus.
In five minutes (or free delivery), we thought about skating as a pizza boy through a modern city in Crowd Surfers, a 3D speedrunning game.
Bloom would’ve let us calm things back down while we explored and restored life to a cozy 3D alien planet as a curious robot.
We could’ve tangled ourselves into RGB’s interdimensional tale, where an archaeologist would uncover corruption in a futuristic 2D civilization.
Always in season, Hideaway is a serene 2D resource management game where we’d play as a deer to complete quests for forest animals.
But maybe we’d travel back a few eras into the gray world of Cove of Mystery, a 2D investigation game with a supernatural twist.
Shooting stars gain a whole new meaning in Stellarcide, where we’d strategize our survival in its 2D cyberpunk-like space terrains.
In the end…
There were so many different paths GDA could’ve taken with all these unique, enticing options that our pitchers worked so hard on. It’d be a win for us to build any of these games—that made the decision all the more difficult.
The weekend spent on voting was tense. Members and officers chewed on their lips and twiddled their thumbs as we all waited to figure out which direction GDA would go in this year.
I’m honored to share with you what turn we made at this crossroads.
Well then. There is little suspense left for me to keep you in, isn’t there? I haven’t much else to report for now other than a massive congratulations to all our pitchers for their hard work.
Till later, gamers! Some guest narrators and I will see you back here in Winter quarter to kickstart the development of…
Well Witches.