Dev Log #1: The Very Beginning

9/24/25

"Life comes at ya fast kid."

Hello and welcome! If you're here, you must be interested in how we came up with this idea to begin with, or you wanted to know more about who we are. Let's start with the second question: Who are we?

Pajama Kid: I stumbled into the field of biocontrol back in early 2023. I started to enjoy it a little too much. So much so, that I completely tossed my plans for med school out the window and decided to roll around in dirt and insects all day. That's pretty much the whole story so far.

Tangelojack: Speaking on behalf of them. They also stumbled into this field in late 2024. Unlike me (Pajama Kid), Tangelojack already had a love of insects. Much like me though, they also decided to throw away any prior career plans to roll around in dirt and insects.

We're two people who assist with biocontrol-related research, who also just happen to have the skills necessary to make engaging media materials... like video games for instance. And thus, the (B)iocontrol (M)ulti-(M)inigame Series was born.

This series was originally meant to just be a community outreach project. I felt that a lot of community outreach didn't have engaging enough material that could grab the attention of those who generally don't interact or think much about the field of biology. I also wanted to make something fun and engaging, while also being (at least mostly) realistic enough to convey the world of biocontrol (as well as research in general). Unfortunately, I have the artistic capacity of a broken vacuum, so I was ecstatic when Tangelojack came along. Together, we started designing our first game. This isn't that game though.

I designed a game that had multiple parts to it: base building, resource management, dungeon diving, the list goes on. Despite having little game design experience, I kept adding more and more parts to this game before I said "Maybe I should break it into little parts first." This game is just one of many little parts. We started to design this game specifically; the mechanics, the systems, the art, the theme, and so much more. We wanted the first of our games to be fun, captivating, and easy to pick up for anyone. We also wanted to convey what we do. Really though, we just wanted to make a weevil game.

I got to work designing everything using Godot. I chose Godot because it's user-friendly and easy to pick up, but also open source and the community has been pretty wonderful so far. Every Godot tutorial told me "roguelikes are a great way to get into game design!" I will never make that recommendation to someone else. The lies I was told. "Roguelikes are simple!", "Roguelikes just need a lot of items to be interesting.", "Roguelike mechanics are super easy to code!"... the list goes on. First of all game design is not simple. Secondly, even if its just a bunch of items, it was a struggle coming up with the current 20+ items we have in our game currently. I can't imagine making more than 100 items. My gripes aside, I spent a little over half a year jamming Godot information into my head and after two failed attempts, this game was born!... A game that we currently don't have a name for. I only just finished the basic system of the game (emphasis on basic). I still need to refactor (hehe, I'm a programmer) so much of the code for reasons I won't disclose (I only just recently learned what a global variable is). Tangelojack's to-do list isn't much better. They're still working on the hybrid enemy designs, item frames, item designs, upgrade designs; the list goes on. But hopefully, we'll be able to deliver more than we already have. So. Much. More. Until then, thank you so much for checking out the website and joining us on our game dev journey. We hope to deliver wonderful content that is equal parts engaging and informative!

-Pajama Kid