Ever wondered what CRAZY hijinks a minimum wage worker gets up to? Do you yearn for the 2000's, the past of MP3 players, or perhaps even just a game with a fun and funky art style? 

ButtonBeepGames Presents: Krazy Carters. A game inspired by famous titles such as Jet Set Radio and Crazy Taxi, where you can wrangle shopping carts and explore over 3 Parking lots to make ends meet! Avoid cars, cones, people, and merchandise to keep the store running. Or don’t—smash your cart into your surroundings, live on the wildside; it’s your choice in Krazy Carters.  

To give you an idea of what our goal at ButtonBeepGames is: 

Our studio is part of 1 of 2 teams in our college’s Game Simulation course.  Our team has been working hard during the last 7 weeks to finish Krazy Carters over the course of our college’s spring semester. Here’s a little behind the scenes look that will give you some insight into the progress of our game so far! 

The CARTists:

The artists on our team have been focusing on creating a variety of 3D assets to put into our game, each unique asset, such as these environmental props, are stylized and hand painted by our artists with the goal to fit typically boring, everyday objects and buildings into the game's fun and colorful artstyle.   

We’ve also been making quite a bit of progress on the characters in our game.  Our main character, the fella who is pushing the carts,  has also been modeled to look stylized and cartoony. The character has recently been rigged, and will soon be textured and animated.  

Our zany and stylish NPCs shown below, will be seen wandering around the levels within the next few weeks, but as of now, the artist is re-working the shoes on the characters to make them look even more stylized and detailed.  

“I made shoes for 2 NPC’s but when I made the 3rd NPC’s shoes I drastically improved the appearance and now I need to remake the other 2 shoes…” (CI)

The Cart Mechanics: 

Our Programmers and Production teammates are currently tinkering around in Unity, getting the cogs in the machine of our game to run smoothly.  It’s been quite the trial-and-error process of getting GitHub and the code to cooperate.  Specifically with getting the main mechanic that allows the carts to be collected and stacked in a line, but it’s been a rewarding and satisfying endeavor nonetheless as they get things operating, a true show of our programmers’ resilience and determination.  

Our team has also been experimenting with adding in shaders to give the assets the appearance of having line art, as well as adding splines into the scenes that move NPCs and cars about, making the environment feel more alive.  Those cars also have a variety of wacky honks that play when the player comes in contact with the cars.  

The interactable MP3 player, another highly anticipated, and unique mechanic we have incorporated into the game, is now up and running.  Players are now able to use the “q” and “e” keys to navigate through to the playlist of songs made by our very own sound designer, and choose what they want to jam out to as they run through the level.  

Up Next:

It’s been a slow and steady pace, but the payoff speaks for itself.  I look forward to getting to report on the programmers’ next innovation, and I’m also very excited to show off all the new and stylish props (maybe even some animations) we’ll have finished for next week's entry.   

In Conclusion:

With each new build release, this world we’ve been working so hard on, comes more and more alive.  With each added prop, code change, and sound added, we get closer and closer to finalizing our game.  We still have a ways to go, but we’re almost there!

Thanks so much for reading this far, our game is available below to play.  I encourage you to share our game, recommend it to a friend, and check in next week to see what other “krazy” things will have been added into Krazy Carters! 

Since you’ve made it to the end of the log, why not check out our Twitter and see what other bonus content we have posted there. 

Pssst— by the way our sister team is also working on a rad game called Marcescent: Dragon’s Lair