Our lead programmer shares about making The Cauldron Kids! 🪄

Hi there, hope you're doing well!

Today we'd like to share with you some dev insights! I interviewed our lead programmer, Mauricio, who's very excited to share his experience with you today ✨ Let's go!!

Q: Can you sum up what’s your role/what you do concretely in the development of The Cauldron Kids? M: So my role in The Cauldron Kids was originally as the game's solo programmer, but as time went on and our team grew I turned into the game's Lead Programmer, where I focused a lot more on the game's central systems and also organizing the programming team's sprints, tasks and communicating with the team.

Q: How would you describe your process? It looks pretty organized from the outside! M: When it comes to coding a system or a feature, I first focus on understanding what it entails by establishing its goal, create a broad solution to reach it, break the solution down into little subtasks that I can analyze individually, and finally start linking these subtasks together to create an integrate system. I think of it as a diamond shape- the top is the goal, the middle is where we break down tasks, and the bottom is where we connect every task one by one to work together toward that goal. Keeping a notebook was crucial for this, as I am a very visual thinker!

Q: About the screenshot of your dev notes that you shared, what stage of development is it from? What was your process at this time of developing The Cauldron Kids? Did it change a lot since then? M: I believe that's from the early stages, you can see I was talking about systems! The first half of the code production went into building this framework, with a focus on preserving and enhancing the artistic and narrative intent. It was a very complex task and I was worried it was going to take very long, but I knew we had entered a new phase when luzoko (our gameplay programmer) and I started working in parallel, where we struck a good rhythm, iterated a lot and were able to really get our vision across. It was a big change- from having weeks of non-visual system work to suddenly having days where you would make a ton of cutscenes, minigame tweaks and fun dialogue sequences. The latter half was a lot more fun!

What did you enjoy working on the most on The Cauldron Kids? M: I LOOOVED working on the cutscenes, as I love games like Paper Mario that have a lot of physical comedy in dialogue. I was allowed to integrate a lot of my ideas to the cutscenes and dialogue, which made me so happy. Also, the first race! It was the only minigame I worked on extensively, and it was so fun to get the apple rolling, build our race system, write some ideas and then seeing people try to beat the dev's record. So fun!

Q: A favorite character? 👀 M: Cassie! I'm sorry Layla- but Cassie is the first character we tested, and I have an intense attachment to her due to her love of pasta and chaotic nature. However, I have a very soft spot for Layla since luzoko built most of Layla's route cutscenes & dialogue, so I was able to actually playtest and see her route as if I was a player and I laughed so hard.

Hope you enjoyed hearing about Mauricio's insights! Take care everyone <3

Manon, for the Pet Golem Team