Hi! I’m the developer behind Panda Cub Studios.
This is the first post on the new site, so I wanted to introduce myself, share what I’m building, and explain what Panda Cub Studios is all about.
A cozy little studio
Panda Cub Studios is currently just me, with the help of an awesome artist, and talented sound engineer. I’ve been making games for a long time, but this is the first project I’ll be releasing that’s entirely my own.
My goal is simple: to make small, cozy games that are easy to pick up, relaxing to play, and satisfying to master.
I’ve been making games since I was 9
I started learning game development when I was 9 years old, I just couldn’t stop thinking about games and how they were made. I wanted to make my very own game similar to those I played at the time, such as Super Mario 64, and RuneScape.
At the time, I had no idea how much effort goes into making games, but I decided to finally look into how to start. I came across something called Game Maker 6.
Game Maker was perfect for me at the time, because I had no idea how to code, I didn’t even really understand what coding was. Game Maker provided a easy drag and drop system which made it very easy for a beginner.
I made a few small games in Game Maker, some from tutorial, some I would download a project and change it around or change the graphics, I never really finished a full project at this time.
Trying different Game Engines
After using Game Maker for a few years, I made a few friends from the community on their forums. From that I learnt some programming inside GML.
Shortly after I tried messing around in different game engines. Including “FPS Creator”. It was a fairly simple, easy to edit first person shooter engine. I never really understood how to use the engine fully, but I had a lot of fun making simple levels.
Learning to code
At the time, I must of been around 11 or 12 years old, I started learning how to code. The first way I got into this other than Game Makers scripting language was through RuneScape private servers.
If you are not too sure what a private server is, basically what happens is someone managed to get the code out of the normal download for RuneScape, from there they would change it around to connect to their own custom server, because they can’t access the server code, they have to guess how the server worked using the code they extracted.
I had been playing a lot of RuneScape back then, and I loved getting into the world. Once I realised that I could create my own custom RuneScape version, I jumped straight into it, That’s when I knew I had to learn the Java programming language.
Luckily at this time YouTube was starting to become a big thing, and I managed to find tutorials online to help me learn the Java. I came across the channel TheNewBoston who had some great Java tutorial, although they are very outdated by today standards.
I work hard creating my own custom server, with the help of a friend I met through RuneScape, he was a computer engineer at the time and a lot older than me, so I learnt a lot from him. My private server never really had a lot of players, but I enjoyed it a bunch and learnt a lot along the way, including creating some websites to show-off my servers.
This also got me into creating my own custom game engines, nothing big and I was mainly following tutorials, but the most fun I have with programming is creating my own custom engines even to this day.
Starting to learn Unity
I had seen Unity going around for a bit, at this time I must of been around that age of 15 or 16. It was a little scary to get into at first as it was very different to how Game Maker worked.
Since then, I’ve spent years building up experience, not just through personal projects, but professionally too. I became a freelancer and have worked with several small indie studios, helping ship multiple games.
And now I’m finally doing the thing I’ve wanted to do since I was a kid: releasing my own game under my own studio name.
Introducing Scrambled — my first game
The first Panda Cub Studios game will be called Scrambled.
It’s a word puzzle game where you move letters around to discover words related to a category.
As you play, you’ll collect artifacts to fill up your very own museum. Each category in the museum is from a different era, you will get to choose what artifacts you want to earn!
What’s next for Panda Cub Studios
Scrambled is the first step in this new Studio. After that, I’d love to keep building a small catalogue of cozy games, the kind you can play with a cup of tea and a calm brain.
Follow along
I’ll be using this blog to share:
- development updates on Scrambled
- behind-the-scenes progress
- release plans and announcements
- future game ideas
If you’d like to follow the journey, keep an eye on our blog and thank you for being here at the start. It genuinely means a lot.
Tom – Panda Cub Studios