Chain Gang Chase is a game that can be played with up to eight players. I ran a successful Kickstarter campaign to raise funds and hire some students who will work with me full-time on the game this Spring.
Chain Gang chase started as a side project for the OUYA game console, of which I am a backer. I wanted to make a couch co-op for the system, since that's my favorite type of gameplay.
I ran my own little development sprint in June of 2013, during which time I threw together a game prototype in libGDX, along with a companion website that features an online map editor, accounts (through A3M), and forums (through vanilla).
When OUYA launched their #FreeTheGames fund, I saw an opportunity to take my prototype through to production. With the full support of the Center for MAGIC at RIT, I drafted a plan for a Kickstarter, and set to work.
The video sums up the project in under three minutes and it's where I point people to for a distilled description of the project. My dad and some students helped shoot the video, and then I did the editing work in Adobe After Effects.
In what was perhaps the longest 30 days of my life, the project was live on Kickstarter. I tracked its progress obsessively, monitoring social networks, responding to questions, thanking backers, and publishing updates—all the while still teaching four college courses.
Now that the campaign is over, I'm in the process of hiring two students: a game developer and a web developer. The three of us will work to polish the game and its companion website, getting it ready for launch in May 2014.