Project Description:

In a long-forgotten place, two ethereal entities named Huli and Maomi maintain the celestial balance of the spirit world. When a mysterious dark force threatens that balance, they spring into action and defeat the darkness at great personal cost. Join Huli and Maomi as they traverse eight lush, hand-drawn landscapes and try to reunite with each other after being tragically separated.

Huli was made in collaboration with the Portland Indie Game Squad (PIGSquad) and the Creative Media and Digital Culture Program (CMDC Program) at Washington State University Vancouver during the PIGSquad’s three week June Summer Slow Jam event. The project’s pre-production workshop was funded by the Associated Students of Washington State University Vancouver (ASWSUV) and hosted by the Digital Design Club.

My involvement in this project began in a joint grant-writing effort with Dr. Dene Grigar, Director of the CMDC program at WSUV. I leveraged my position as President of the Digital Design Club (DDC) and spearheaded the effort to write a grant proposal and present our joint game jam event proposal to the ASWSUV Senate, resulting in a grant for the full $3500 requested.

I collaborated with Dr. Grigar, Will Lewis (PIGSquad Founder & President), and Marlowe Dobbe (PIGSquad Officer) to coordinate a co-sponsored game event between WSUV, The CMDC Program, ASWSUV, and The Digital Design Club. After several meetings, we created a two-day game development workshop where Will and Marlowe presented and introduced workshop attendees to the basics of game development and game jams. Will, Marlowe, Dene, and I facilitated structured breakout sessions and creative brainstorming sessions for participants to build on the game pitch I created with the Huli Executive Team prior to the workshop.

After the successful workshop, the entire team of 30 attendees were divided into creative teams based on their strengths and started our two-week development cycle for Huli. We joined the PIGSquad’s June Summer Slow Jam and where I enabled communication across our six creative teams, responded to teammates, lead content discussions and problem solving sessions, and pushed the group to adopt solutions that allowed our team to publish a robust game by the end-of-jam deadline.

Learn more about Huli at www.huli-the-game.com.

Collaborators:

Andrew Thompson, Dave Sabrowski, Kathleen Zoller, Joel Clapp, Barysh Agaliyev, Sarah West, Ahria Nicholas, Jazz Jackson, Cameron Dan, Drew Swanson, Yimin Que, Jei Shi, Kathy Klaus, Seyyar Tedorov, Elyse Mollahan, Evan Astrue, Arlo Ptolemy, Brandan Touhey, Keegan Walden, Anthony Greenwood, Ransom Reed, Jaden Torson, Eric Gerdlund, Preston Reed, Grace Rouleau, Charlie Klever, Kylie Sickles, Annabelle Castro