Many kids dream of making a video game for consoles one day. But few can say they actually achieved that at the age of 12.
However, there is an organization named Girls Make Games, which tries to encourage more women to join the video game industry by introducing them to game development at a young age. The idea came about after the married couple founders of a game studio named LearnDistrict discovered that the vast majority of job applicants were male. After a tweet about the idea of creating a summer camp for girls to learn game design received a great deal of support, including from industry veterans such as Tim Schafer (creator of Psychonauts), Girls Make Games was established.
The organization also holds game jams, in which kids throw out their ideas for video games and then the ideas are judged by a panel which decides the best one. The idea that wins moves on to Kickstarter to receive funding to hire professionals to improve the game’s production values, and ultimately moves on to Steam.
The first of these games to make its way to a console, the Nintendo Switch, was Shredded Secrets, designed by a team of 12-year-olds who called themselves Team Sarcastic Shark Clouds. It was judged by a panel which included Phil Spencer from Microsoft’s Xbox division, Shawn Laydon from Sony’s PlayStation division, and Devon Pritchard from Nintendo. They were shown a very early beta of the game with simple graphics and unfinished gameplay mechanics, and onscreen unspoken dialog. The game’s concept in its early form was enough to impress the industry executives and win first place.
Shredded Secrets went on to raise money on Kickstarter to hire professionals to clean it up from its early beta form, and add more detailed graphics, music and voice acting. The kids would be required to do any tasks they’re capable of, while the professionals were there to clean up the rest of the product. It not only made its way to the Switch, but was promoted on Nintendo of America’s YouTube channel.
The prototype of the game, which led to it winning first place and a Kickstarter.
So, what is the game about?
Shredded Secrets is a 2D platformer with hand-drawn graphics, set inside a school. Each character faces their fears in a very literal fashion, but first, let’s meet these characters.
Isabella
A girl with dyed hair bullied for her nerdiness and being a bit overweight. Her biggest bully in particular is Oakley.
Oakley
A bully who picks on many kids, but especially Isabella. He’s feared by many of the other kids, but he’s got a secret of his own: he’s gay.
Taylor
A boy who gets bad grades in school no matter how hard he studies. Other people think he’s lazy, not realizing that he might have a learning disability. Sometimes he escapes to the world of video games to get away from his problems.
London
A stressed-out teacher who cares deeply about the students, but is struggling with mental health issues of her own. Her story crosses over with Taylor, and he’s one of the students who asks for her help.
The gameplay is pretty standard 2D platforming. Some of the playable characters have different abilities, like being able to attack, or block attacks.
The game is a world of overt symbolism set entirely in a platformy, video-gamey representation of a school. Exaggerated versions of real world threats attack in “light” levels, while “dark” levels have more shadowy monster-like representations of even more abstract fears. Serving the role of moving platforms are cleaning robots and floating pieces of paper.
The first playable character, Isabella, is being pestered by bullies, especially Oakley. He fires projectiles at her in the form of insults. Get hit by too many insults and you’re back to the last checkpoint. Isabella can also take damage from standing on slime which covers some of the floors or touching piles of trash. And she refills her health by collecting ice cream.
From time to time, you can read Isabella’s thoughts, some of which are spoken aloud by a mediocre adult voice actor. Isabella also gains the ability to block attacks.
Eventually, Isabella encounters classmates who are on her side, and it ends with them reporting Oakley’s bullying to the principal.
After completing two levels of Isabella’s story, Oakley’s story shows up. Yup, now you play as her bully.
Oakley can attack his classmates by firing projectile insults at them, which makes them run away crying. For a while, no-one attacks Oakley, even though his internal monologue makes it clear that his life is far from perfect. What does he have to fear?
The answer comes when you open a door that drops you into a room where you’re suddenly assailed by girls who toss insults such as “WEAK,” “GIRLY” and “SISSY.” Oakley has no defense against the insults that actually hurt him, because he’s secretly gay and hides behind a tough guy persona. He doesn’t want anyone to know what the boy he has a crush on means to him.
In the process of learning to accept himself, Oakley develops the ability to fire compliments, albeit mixed in with his insults, requiring timing to make sure not to shoot the wrong projectile. The compliments are used to fight shadowy representations of both bullying and the effects on victims. Hitting these representations with enough compliments changes them back into happy people, while insults make their shadowy form stronger.
Taylor’s story involves his fear of failure and his terrible grades. He is literally attacked by anthropomorphic bad grades and also has to fight two bosses – a shadowy representation of his “perfect” sister who gets good grades and all the positive attention, and a giant living worksheet. His weapon? His book, which he throws like a boomerang.
There’s a sequence in which Taylor plays a video game with pixel art graphics on a retro TV, to escape his life problems. But he can’t escape them even there, as the game eventually crosses over into the real world, where the evil bad grades are waiting to attack his pixelated avatar. A representation of how even playing video games doesn’t stop his anxiety about his upcoming test.
Taylor gets some help from his teacher, London, as he takes on a massive worksheet in a boss fight and decides to ask for tutoring to help with his school issues.
The final playable character is London. Her job is to help the kids with their problems, while she herself is weighed down by depression. “If I can’t help myself, I can at least help a student in need.” Other teachers view her as unstable and those are the projectile insults thrown at her.
Her attack is to shoot valentine hearts and other symbols of positivity at shadowy demons which represent her mental problems. London also has her own unique obstacle – clingy students. Literally.
Once each character’s story is fully completed, the finale, Homecoming, shows up and after walking through that and seeing the dialog, the game ends.
Shredded Secrets has a simple presentation, which follows naturally from its roots. The graphics and animation are simple and cartoony. The music consists of only a few tunes, one of them being a semi-creepy tune with twisted children’s laughter that plays in the “dark”-themed areas, and another being a chiptune. The voice acting is generic adult actors voicing both kids and adults. This game is low budget, and it shows.
However, even with that budget, a lot of imagination is put into what’s done with it. The way characters’ stories cross over with each other adds depth to the narrative. And each character having a unique obstacle or gameplay mechanic themed after their own issues is a perfect example of the gameplay continually introducing new ideas as it goes along. Levels have collectibles which are themed after the current character. There are even creative details such as the piles of depressed kids lying on the floor in one of London’s levels. Their visual similarity to the piles of dirty laundry that exist in some of London’s other levels adds a sort of “wait a minute, is that…?” type of surprise.
Another small detail includes the face on the life meter changing expression when the character takes damage, or London’s panicky face when she uses up her attack power. In an especially clever touch, Oakley’s face changes from happy to mean when he takes damage, while everyone else’s face changes from happy to worried. Why does Oakley look mean instead of worried when he’s hurt? Because he’s hiding his hurt behind his tough guy persona. It’s these subtle details combined with the continuous stream of new ideas which shine through the game’s low budget and show that the developers really did put a lot of effort into their work.
There’s easily things to criticize about Shredded Secrets if looking at it from a professional perspective, such as the storylines and their simplified understanding of the complexity of issues like bullying, depression and learning disabilities. And the gameplay is hardly a polished example of 2D platforming. Plus, the Switch version requires the use of a Joycon and doesn’t support the Pro Controller. But one can certainly say that the young developers’ hearts were in the right place, and some of the characters’ endings aren’t too picture perfect – for example, Taylor expresses relief at merely passing a test even without getting an A.
Maybe one day, the individuals who made up Team Sarcastic Shark Clouds will be involved in something bigger in the video game industry and this game will have been their entry point. Or maybe this will simply be just a thing they once did, that they will point to one day as they tell their own kids about their brief time as game developers. But if nothing else, a group of sixth graders developed a game with an original theme, with adult help that was hired with Kickstarter money and released it on an extremely popular game console. And that’s something no other kid can claim to have done.
Links:
A news article about Shredded Secrets: https://www.geekwire.com/2019/four-seattle-girls-score-top-prize-national-girls-make-games-competition-game-bullying/
The Kickstarter page for Shredded Secrets, which also includes a downloadable demo of the game: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2020158234/girls-make-games-presents-shredded-secrets
