Initial Storyboard

Milada Game Productions started with three Computer Science students: Larissa Tsai, Michelle Leano, and Adam Parilla. We all met in a video game design class at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

How it came to be

With the talent to bring all types of people together, big or small, young or old, video games have the ability to tell a story–and not only do video games tell a story, they allow you to live that story, and live it a million times, in a million lives. As the character traverses that story, their struggle becomes your struggle and you are able to feel many emotions that connect you to the game.

We’ve brainstormed many ideas before “The Life of a Penny,” was born. The possibilities were endless. As creators with different video game backgrounds, how do we create a game that feels authenticate to each of us, that tells a story that we love?

During our brainstorming process we each recounted games that we enjoy playing now and in the past. We analyzed aspects of the game that made it enjoyable:

• What kind of emotions did this game elicit?
• What are some of the verbs in this game?
• What kind of emotions did doing those verbs give?
• What are the interactions we get from those verbs?
• What are the rewards of the game?

… etc.,

These were all things we had to think about from the games we loved. While thinking about these factors, how do we draw inspiration to incorporate it into our new game design?

Initial Ideas and Questions

• What if we were a San Francisco cable car rolling down the hills of California? (Subway Surfers inspired)

• What if we were trying to defend the city from an Alien invasion? (Donkey Kong inspired)

• What if we created a penny game? (Super Mario Bro’s inspired)

• Should we make it educational?

• How should a user progress to the next level in each of these ideas? Where is the challenge?

Eventually we came to like the penny idea and drew inspiration from Super Mario Bros. This is a multiplayer game that many of us were familiar with. A game that inspired nostalgia and adventure, as well as bonding with the people that you played with. And so, we drew inspiration from that sort of game. We’d create this game to be a 2D side scroller.