LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — A couple of local game designers are showing off their new video game, but the big winner won’t be the people who play.
Olivia Dunlap and Tanner Marshall are hard at work on “To the Rescue,” a video game they plan to release on PC and Mac in 2020. They have spent the last two years working on it, but said this summer has allowed them to spend more time on it than usual.
“One of the biggest challenges has been sort of nailing down a workflow that works with, kind of, our crazy lives,” Marshall said.
Marshall and Dunlap are graduate students at UA-Little Rock. They both have part-time jobs, but created Little Rock Games because they want careers in game design.
“To the Rescue” is a simulation game that puts the player in charge of a dog shelter.
“One day, walking to class,” Marshall recalled, “Olivia brought up that there’s a lot of interesting space for, like, emotional decision-making in a game about an animal shelter. Right? Because you have these animals that you—ideally—care a lot about, and you’re trying to help, but you’re often put in a position where you have to make really hard choices about how to help the most animals that you can. So, in terms of, like, a sim management game, there’s a lot of space there to explore for the player.”
The player will have to manage a tight budget, find good adoption fits for the dogs in their care, and deal with scenarios shelters often face, including contagious illnesses brought in by a new dog.
“You have this health outbreak, or you suddenly start getting lots of one kind of dog because some movie came out and everybody went out and bought a dog that matched the movie,” Marshall mentioned.
But Dunlap and Marshall wanted to do more than increase players’ awareness of shelters’ problems: they wanted to fix them. They plan to donate 20% of the proceeds from the game’s sales to shelters.
“Whenever we’re working on something like this, we want to try and make sure that it’s actually doing something,” Marshall said. “That’s a big part of it for us.”
Marshall said the two long-time friends are dog-lovers. They have a four-year-old Great Dane named Keanu Reeves who encourages and distracts them as they work in their home office.
“He’s never been in as tight a situation as a lot of rescue dogs have,” Marshall stated. “So, we sort of wanted to help other dogs as well as we can, even if we can’t adopt a ton of dogs and overflow our house with them.”
“As much as I want to,” Oliva said. “Right!” Tanner replied.
This is the second game the pair have developed. Their first was a tabletop game called “Galactic Scoundrels,” but they wanted their second project to be digital. They both studied computer science at UA-Little Rock and formed their company to turn their studies into careers.
“Getting into the industry is, you sort of just have to make something, and you just have to sort of pour your heart into it and see what sticks,” Dunlap said.
“Especially if you’re doing it independently because, especially here in Little Rock, there’s not any opportunities for large-scale game development at the moment. So, we formed our own company because we wanted to stay here, and we wanted to make the sort of games we wanted to make,” she explained.
They will use Kickstarter to raise money for the further development of “To the Rescue,” as they did with their first venture. They are also continuing a theme of giving back, which they started by donating dozens of copies of “Galactic Scoundrels” to youth homes around Arkansas.
“Our base goal for the Kickstarter is $16,000,” Marshall said, “and it goes up from there with stretch goals, so the more money we get beyond that, the more, sort of, features there will be in the game. But we feel pretty solid about that. Our Kickstarter last summer, Galactic Scoundrels, raised $27,000. So, we’ve been down this road before. A little bit different, but a lot’s the same, too.”
“It’s really our dream to keep working on this game and make it bigger and more expansive,” Dunlap said, “and adding things like, potentially, you know, like a leaderboard. Something like that is something we’ve discussed before. But it really all comes down to how much funding we get, or if we potentially get a publisher after the Kickstarter campaign. The scale of the game all depends on how much funding we can get.”
The Kickstarter campaign will run from August 6 to September 3. Dunlap said she is excited for people to give her game a chance, and by extension, give real-life dogs a better chance at finding good homes.
“Well, honestly, my dream for the game is just to see it out there,” she stated. “As our first digital game, I’d love to see people, you know, enjoying and playing the game, and really, getting as much enjoyment out of playing it as we’ve had making it.
“But, again, our goal from the start has been to raise awareness about shelters, so the more copies of the game that people buy, the more proceeds end up going to real-world charities. So, really, a goal for me would just be to see that element of it be successful. And also, to see, to maybe inspire other developers, to see that stuff like this is possible. Games can have an actual, positive impact on the world. I mean, a lot of games are really meaningful to people, but an actual, physical, tangible result would be really awesome for me.”
Dunlap said they have not yet picked a shelter or charity to give the money to. Since they plan to market the game to people around the country, they hope to pick organizations that work with shelters nationwide.