Dylan Ramsden is one of four aspiring second-year game design students from Vega School who have successfully developed a game called Neon Runner which has been published on the Google Play store.
The proud student elaborated on his passions and dreams coming true. Born in 1999 and having lived in Fairland most of his life, Ramsden attended Cliffview Primary School but in the middle of Grade 6, he moved to Treverton Preparatory School and College in KwaZulu-Natal to complete his primary school studies. Ramsden then completed his matric at Trinity House in Randpark Ridge.
“I struggled to find subjects I loved but enjoyed the coding and practical side of information technology and I worked hard to excel in this subject. I believe that this gave me an advantage when I started to study an IIE BCIS Game Design and Development at Vega. From a young age, I had a passion for gaming, but I never dreamed about creating my own games. I never really trusted my creativity until I started studying at Vega School.”
One of Ramsden biggest achievements this year is the publishing of the game he created with Project Pixel on the Google Play store. “Everything I learn from Vega in my degree, everything myself and Project Pixel worked on in our free time, and everything I experiment with in terms of making games just fuels my passion more and more. I am definitely in a place I want to be in and I wouldn’t swap it for any other degree. As Project Pixel’s first official project, we decided that having fun in the process of making the game was the most important aspect to keep in mind, which we definitely did.”
Ramsden said the idea of Neon Runner originated from a project this semester in both school modules of game development and game design. “We were required to create our own endless runner and were given an opportunity to choose the theme and different mechanics we wanted to add into it. As a group, we met one afternoon and decided we would create an endless runner, putting all of our skills and strengths together, and so it began. Although we worked on rough prototypes at varsity in our free time, we decided the only way we would get a finished product is if we did our own game jam at someone’s house during the holidays.
“We polished and cleaned it up for the Google Play store. The hardest part about its development, in terms of programming, was playtesting the game countless times to pick out all the bugs and fix them, and in the process of developing Neon Runner, I learnt several important lessons. The first was that a game isn’t made in one day and is never really finished. The second and most important lesson we learnt was that we need to stick to who we are and not change in terms of the way we make games. Although we are capable of making greater games, we are very proud of Neon Runner and it’s the best start we could have wished for as Project Pixel,” said Ramsden.
One of his future hopes and aspirations in game design is to develop Project Pixel as an established Indie games company. “[I want] to create games that mean something to the people who play them but also to play a part in building the gaming industry in South Africa. We as Project Pixel hope to create a comfortable environment for game designers where they can let their imagination run free and create the games they’ve always wanted to make.”
