A Recipe for Survival

Hello World! – Assembling the team.

Hi! My name is Robert aka. Wyxip and I am Project Director at Shy Penguin Studios. Shy Penguin is a newly formed Indie Dev Team made up of an amazing group of people. This is a brief article on how we came to be, and who the team are.

Foundations – Having been made redundant at the end of 2024, I was sat at a table in November 2024, with Molly (Co-Project Lead and Head of Marketing), trying to come up with what to do next, ideas ranged from computer building to running an escape room! In the end, we came up with a very basic idea for a cat-restaurant themed card game! But neither of us can create art or code, so clearly game dev was a bad idea…

Until! – We had a chat with a friend of a few years and incredibly skilled artist, Annie (Head of Art) and talked about the possibility of her joining our team. She was super enthusiastic about the idea of working on A Recipe for Survival and we wasted no time in getting started with some concept art a little more detailed than the sketches made at the kitchen table a few days prior. A month then went by and we had found a great coder to join our team, we were all super hyped and thrilled at the opportunity to get the project rolling at full steam! Annie is the powerhouse of the team and everyone involved in development will feel the effect she has on every aspect of the game. By helping out in every area it is clear that Molly and I could not have asked for a better partner to bring in!

Crisis hit – Our coder just dropped off the map, no responses to our messages and we could not get started on the project because of this. The whole idea felt like it had just been blown apart, as if we had been crushed, we had wasted a month and got nothing to show for it baring some sketches Annie had made. To try and fix this, we sent out requests to a few more coders that we knew and one of Annie’s friends, Josh (Now our head of coding), showed a lot of interest in the project! Cautious that we didn’t want the same issue again we explored the idea of Josh coming onboard and found it to be a perfect fit for us! By December 2024, we had a committed coder. To this day Josh has not lost that enthusiasm for game dev he displayed at the start and is always delivering the very best for the project!

Growth and Team Improvement – Annie’s and my mutual friend Alex aka. Innae is someone we knew we had to get onboard. Alex’s insatiable thirst to succeed and bubbly personality is something that any team would be honored to have among their staff. Alex brings far more than his fantastic work ethic to the team, he pulls the team together through his always positive attitude and drives us all forward! With his key role being Narrative lead Innae develops the story for our game and brings the characters to life. He can always be found coming up with a quirky adjustment to the character lines and developing an immersive environment for every player!

Audio, Audio, Aidan! – Audio, a mantra that could be heard amongst the team approaching then end of January 2025. We had yet to find someone to head up the audio development for the team. And yet here we were shouting to anyone who would listen that the audio and music was a key feature in our game. Enter Aidan (Head of Audio) a fellow uni student with a knack for the best guitar improv I have ever heard, while he will be the first to admit he cannot compose on certain instruments the drive and tenacity he shows are instrumental (pun not intended) to the incredible atmospheres he creates.

New developments – With the team pushing forward and rapidly expanding we decided we needed a way to showcase all of this talent to the outside world. Mercury has been exceptional at developing our website to an excellent standard that we are all proud of. Learning new skills along the way, Mercury has shown incredible resilience and skill working with (or against sometimes) wordpress. With our new website we are able to express ourselves and really show what we are capable of.

Community focus – For us, community is at the heart of everything we do. Michael (MacYoda – Head Moderator and Development Advisor) is a real contributor to everything successful about Shy Penguin. With his industry experience he is a sensible head to consult for all things design orientated. To further this without fail he will have a dad joke at the ready that will both make you groan and laugh at the same time. Having him around is always a pleasure and we look forward to working with him as always!

There are of course the other people who have helped out and we really appreciate everything that has been done to help the project! I am hoping to make this a weekly/fortnightly blog that will update you on the various aspects of making a game as part of an indie game dev team. Thanks for reading and I can’t wait to travel through this journey with you!

Wyxip 🙂