Though the initial experience was messy, the team thought the dogs were so cute and fun to play with that they opted to reboot the project into a proper full experience. "At the start of 2019, what we had was a head-to-head, local multiplayer dog photography arcade game where basically you were in the little arena, and it was split-screen, and the goal was basically to take pictures of as many different dogs as possible," Shasha says. The game that came out of it was very different from what Pupperazzi would eventually be, but it did provide the seed. The jam was initially intended to only last two weeks, but instead it went for two months. The idea for Pupperazzi stemmed from an internal game jam the team did at the end of 2018 into 2019, where someone came up with the idea of taking photos of dogs. Maintaining that balance has meant Sundae Month has had to quietly cancel a lot of projects, Shasha says, but with Pupperazzi the team has been able to come together for a proper "big" project. They've also kept the lights on by taking plenty of work for outside clients, mostly game development as well as some educational apps. The team, which currently consists of between ten and 11 folks working on Pupperazzi, has an eclectic portfolio including a side-scrolling comedy-adventure game called Dad Quest where you use your indestructible child as a weapon, and the anti-adventure game Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor. Shasha has been working at Sundae Month since the studio started eight years ago, when its founders met in Vermont at Champlain College. And then I upload my photos to "Dog Net," an in-game social network where I receive feedback on my numerous photos until my audience gets annoyed at me for spamming them with cute dog pictures (how dare!) and stops rating them temporarily. I can throw a stick or (goofily) a banana for them to run after, or try to line up a nice shot of a happy dog sitting in front of the lighthouse at the end of the beach, framed by the ocean. There's a pile of dogs, big and small in all different colors, chasing one another around the beach and, once I pet them, happily following after me, too. I emerge in front of a beach shack where a chill pup named Sea Dog instructs me on how to use my camera and demands a photo of himself, before unleashing me on a dog-covered beach to take photos to my heart's content. Popping into Pupperazzi myself the other day, I find that Shasha is exactly right.
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