Hello Ghosties!
Have you been doomscrolling recently? Losing yourself to the endless feed of online content?
Well, luckily we have a better kind of doomscroll to introduce today —— Doomscroll Studios!
Doomscroll is one of the studios in Cohort 4 of the Baby Ghosts program and they recently did a major rebrand you can check out on their shiny new website.
Check out our full interview with them below:
In your own words, who is Doomscroll?
Justine: DoomScroll is our friend group making cool things together!
Luke: Doomscroll to me is a group of friends putting their skills together to make interesting and innovative things.
Mayan: Doomscroll is an opportunity for us to carve a space for ourselves and explore things to do in the industry for ourselves. It’s an opportunity to make the projects we want to make with our friends and hopefully make money.
Hedy: Doing what we want to do and being able to do it feasibly!
Roann: A collective of brainrotted Gen-Zs. I see and identify DoomScroll as a group of friends trying to reinvent the negative connotations and channelling all of this to create something new and unique!
What’s your biggest takeaway from the Baby Ghosts program?
Mayan: Our biggest take away is our relationship with our peer supports, Cozy Comet. The peer mentorship gave us a chance to connect with others in the program and just having a support network is nice.
Justine: Being surrounded by other new and upcoming worker-centric game studios who are struggling with the same things as we are! It’s made us feel just a bit better knowing we aren’t alone and we have people to turn to when we need support.
Luke: I think we can all agree with that.
Hedy: Thumbs up.
Roann: True.
What’s unique about the way you make games (and work together)?
Hedy: We all share the same passion and drive and that pushes us to make games that we believe are strong in design.
Mayan: We are a very critical team and pay a lot of attention to the smaller details. We care a lot about what we create and we always make sure that the quality of our games are up to our own standards, while also ensuring that all elements within the game fit cohesively.
Justine: We all have a strong eye for visual design and good, engaging gameplay. We’re also always trying to stand out by going down the path less travelled, such as experimenting with emerging technologies and gaming platforms.
Luke: I think our beginnings as friends gave us a great starting point for developing procedures and pipelines for productions. I think we all reallllly like making things and being involved in as much as we can, so we all have a deep understanding of each other’s contributions to a project and workflow!
Roann: I have a strong opinion that we fill in each other gaps and we all have the same drive as we’ve been working together for awhile; where we do not see each other as just bunch of colleagues, but also close friends that shares the same goals and motivation towards our passion.
What do you think we (all of us involved in game making) do to make the video game industry better?
Justine: We dream of the future when we have the resources to support other smaller game developers and creators! Especially since this industry is so reliant on connection and mutual support.
Hedy: I think the stuff we make are very nuanced and interdimensional. It’s never one faceted in our storytelling or design. So that makes us in a way more inclusive in our player’s experiences and hopefully that will start something in the industry itself to be multi-faceted.
Mayan: We like to get involved in our communities. We still keep in touch with OCAD and we attend a lot of these social events where we get a chance to showcase our work, but we also get to connect with the next generation of game developers. That community is so integral to everyone’s growth and that shared passion for game development keeps us going in an industry facing tough times.
Luke: It’s difficult to answer this question with where we are at right now. We have very big and strong aspirations in making a difference in the creative industries we occupy. We also are always brainstorming ways to build community with the people around us and hope that with future success we will be able to give opportunities to other creatives who are hungry to make awesome stuff!
Roann: SUPPORT THE COMMUNITY. And it is not as shallow as giving away free stuff or information to the public and other peers, but working together and helping each other out to reach other’s goal with the same vision of creating a growing environment and video game scene. To have this approach as one of the priority, this could potentially eliminate and overcoming the tall wall that small indie game studios, such as ourselves, in the industry and exclusivity of the community.
Can you tell us anything about what you’re working on right now?
Roann: We recently attended a couple of expos where we showcased FoodTruck Story (VR Game), this gave us a lot of motivation and the amount of positive feedback from our games and upcoming projects we shared!
Mayan: We’ve currently been working on rebranding ourselves to a brand identity that feels more authentic to us as a collective. We are also working on a 2 player puzzle platformer where the main mechanic features Weensy, a small mouse that can shrink, and The Giant, a large golem that can grow.
Luke: Weensy and The Giant is our second project that will be free to play across all devices. We hope that the experience (and fun of growing and shrinking) will resonate with players and allow us to expand the world of W&G further!
Hedy: Also! We hope to bring an unseen visual style to roblox through Weensy and the Giant.
Justine: After we launch Weensy & The Giant, we hope to use our collective skills to help clients achieve their visions whether it be in game development, branding, web-design or more. We always hope we can lend some help to others!