‘Raccoon Saloon’ is a cute-but-chaotic cooking-style game in which players work together to serve beverages to various charming critters, earn dollars, achieve high scores and customise their saloon and characters – either solo or with 2-4 player in local co-op. The game is inspired by couch co-op classics such as Overcooked and Gang Beasts, with simplified gameplay, an original vibe & aesthetic and an indie spirit all of it’s own. We plan to self-publish it on Xbox in Q3 2025.

After having released a few small indie projects in the past few years and sitting on the “Raccoon Saloon” idea for a while, I began development in December 2024 and made a very rough prototype over the Christmas break. I then steadily developed this further in my evenings and weekends and working towards the GaMaYo demo. As for inspirations, I love the emergent chaotic gameplay that console couch co-op games enable and have really enjoyed playing classics such as Overcooked with my friends, so wanted to make something like this all of my own. I have previously only made 2D indie games but I do have some background in 3D art, so I wanted to challenge myself to create an entirely 3D game this time around. I am using Unity 6 engine and Visual Studio to develop the game, Maya for 3D art, Photoshop and Substance for textures. I also plan on composing and recording an original banjo soundtrack for the game!

Alongside working full-time in video games QA, I am a hobby/indie developer who has released a handful of small casual indie projects on mobile, Steam and Xbox – including “Pickle-Pocalypse” and “PLANTOONS” which appeared at previous GaMaYo events. I also have significant support from my fiancé Chloe, who is a talented independent artist and provides 2D art, design input and incredible voice acting to our games! Our games are developed and published entirely independently in our spare time, and we try to instill a casual and accessible goofiness and personality into each one. We also host twice-yearly game jams in our “2D Game Jammers” Discord server. We make games to express ourselves and to amuse ourselves and others, and we are so grateful for the support from the GaMaYo team and the many great friends we have made through game development.

I really want to capture that emergent chaos of classic couch co-op console games, where friends can enjoy a relatively simple gameplay loop but create their own fun by ultimately working towards a common goal – but getting under each others’ feet, bickering and laughing along the way! I also want to create a really charming and unique vibe and aesthetic, with entirely original character designs, 3D art and a banjo soundtrack composed and recorded entirely by myself.

A cute-but-chaotic couch co-op game about thirsty critters!