“Sniperpunk” is the debut game for Enter CTRL Studios, a team of student games developers from Champlain College in Vermont. It is a combination of classic Atari games with a variety of “punk aesthetics” (e.g. cyberpunk, steampunk, etc.), where players compete against each other in short intense-duels with special abilities to create a chaotic battleground.
“Sniperpunk’s” lead programmer, Andrew Hunt and Producer, Mo Polonsky, shared some valuable insight with the Xavierite about the game development process, as well as the struggles of handling such a big project as college students. Both Andrew and Mo are seniors at Champlain College Vermont, who share a passion for games and both are preparing to enter the gaming industry.
Andrew: “I got started with game development in highschool. I started developing some stuff in C++. At the time, I didn’t like programming so I decided to switch to game development. When I went to college, I realized that I actually liked programming, and I decided to go for a CS major.”
“I started getting into making games with Game Jams. Those (Game Jams) are short competitions that go on for 48-72 hours, where you have to make a game in that allotted amount of time. That’s actually how I met my original team. We figured out, ‘hey we like making games together’, and now we’re here with “Sniperpunk”.”
Mo: “My background is a bit weird. I wanted to either get into games or become a pilot. And so, I originally also wanted to be a programmer. I used a lot of online resources like KhanAcademy to learn. I got myself familiar with Unreal and Blender. I tried to get an idea of every aspect of the industry, such as: design, programming, sound. But none of that really clicked.”
“Eventually, I went into college as a business major, and I found Champlain College, which teaches production. Games need project managers, and since I’m a very organized person, production is what I decided on.”
Andrew and Mo also went into detail on the difficulty of balancing college life with game development.
Andrew: “It’s busy. You definitely have to find time for yourself. That’s probably something I was bad at: time management. I would spend so much time with school and this project instead of socializing. But you have to realize at some point there can be a healthy balance between working and having a life.”
“During Covid, there was so much more time since classes were just a click away. Now that everything’s back, I have to get better at finding a balance. During the past two years of development, I made sure to tell my team not to crunch or work too hard, but I was the only one who didn’t follow that rule.”
Mo: “I think a lot of people in game development have that problem. Game development, as a whole, is an industry of passion. And as you often see in big companies, that passion is often misused by means of overworking and crunching. As a developer or employee of a game company, finding that work-life balance is incredibly important.”
On an academic level, “Sniperunk” has been a rewarding project for Andrew and Mo. From playtesting to presenting parts of the game as assignments, Champlain College has been incredibly supportive of the project.
Andrew: “Both Mo and I were able to use the game as part of an assignment. When I was programming the game’s AI, I was able to present it in my AI class. My whole article and presentation was about giving the AI information on what’s dangerous which would allow it to make smarter gameplay decisions.”
“We also have other students test out the game a lot, and they really like the game. We’ve had a lot of good reception and feedback, especially since we’re in a game design school. We’ve also made some important gameplay changes based on their feedback.”
Mo: “For one of the school projects, I had a pitch presentation in a class being taught by Jason Della Rocca, who’s given a lot of talks at GDC (Game Developer Conference) about how to pitch and market games. During that class, we were able to create a pitch for the game that we then used to reach out to publishers.”
“Since we’re still college students, there’s still a challenge in getting noticed by companies that wanna know your experience working in the industry. I really learned the importance of creating a portfolio to show companies. We’re aiming to make “Sniperpunk” into the kind of game people will pour hundreds of hours into on Steam.”
Andrew also went into depth about how Atari classics inspired the gameplay and mechanics of “Sniperpunk”.
Andrew: “During my second semester, I was talking to my friend who was working on a project for Game Jam. He was working on a remake of “Space Wars” from 1977, one of the first popular games in arcades. Hearing about the project made me realize how many great ideas there were in old games, like the ones on Atari.”
“One of my favorite Atari games was “Outlaw”. “Outlaw” is a 1v1 pistol dueling game where you can aim your gun and ricochet bullets off the edges of walls. I thought it would be really cool to make an updated version of it. I pitched “Sniperpunk” to my team as “Outlaw”, but with a hero-shooter type roster and special abilities.”
Speaking on the game’s stylistic evolution, Andrew explained how the game started as wild west themed, but evolved into a compilation of “punk” genre aesthetics.
Andrew: “I originally pitched “Sniperpunk” as wild west themed, but our level designer told me that was overdone. So instead, he came up with the idea for the theme being a mix of genre aesthetics which have the word ‘punk’ in them. Each of the characters represents a different “punk” aesthetic.”
“There’s Cornelia who is steampunk. Molotov Tommy who is decopunk. EVAK-47 who is cyberpunk. And Eclipse who is raypunk. Every character also has a toolkit that’s derived from their corresponding genre. For example, Molotov Tommy has a jetpack that’s inspired by the movie “The Rocketeer”.”
As for the future of Enter CTRL Studios, things are uncertain, but the focus still remains on finishing “Sniperpunk”.
Andrew: “The goal right now is to finish this thing. We’ve got a lot of people on the team who will be moving into the triple A industry. I’ll be working at Activision, and Mo will be working at Riot Games. But they’ll let us work on personal projects.”
“It’ll depend on what everybody’s feeling, and it’ll also depend on whether or not we get a publisher. Right now, we’ll have to see what happens. I’d love to work on some more stuff, but that’s up to the team as well.”
Mo: “After this game we’ll be making sure of which people wanna stay, go off and do their own thing, or just hang out. And we might have some people who will contribute once in a while. After that we’ll kinda figure out our direction.”
“That will also depend on how “Sniperpunk” goes, because if “Sniperpunk” goes in one direction over another, we might decide to keep supporting “Sniperpunk”. About a third of our team will still be in college after we graduate. Essentially, we would like to keep making games, but we don’t know.”
Whether or not Enter CTRL Studios continues to make games, “Sniperpunk” is already looking like a promising, fun, multiplayer game that’s already addictive and polished. You can download and try the demo for “Sniperpunk” with a friend at: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1658700/SNIPERPUNK/
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