Paulo Arnante: A Promising Filipino Video Game Developer

A couple of weeks back, a game created by a local developer drew much attention on social media. One Last Game, a 2D game developed by Paulo Arnante, focuses on the experiences of a young kid as he moves away from his small town and into the city. In it, Danny — the protagonist — goes around his community to play with friends and have fun one last time. One Last Game features several traditional games in its gameplay including Sipa, Tumbang Preso, and Dodgeball.

Developer Spotlight

Arnante, the creator, is currently a senior at Ateneo De Naga University taking up BS Digital Illustration and Animation Major in Game Development. His batch is the first in their course to have majors in Animation, Game Development, and Graphic Design. Arnante chose to specialize in Game Development, particularly for his fondness for video games. He also aims to become a part of the production team behind a great game in the future. “Another thing that helped me decide is that taking animation subjects and actually animating was not my thing. Although I can learn it, I mostly enjoy and am most passionate about making concept art for video games,” he added.

Arnante firmly believes that the game development industry in the country has lots of potential. Passionate professionals fill the industry, but it’s not necessarily at the level of international recognition yet. Moreover, a lot of games can be developed that draw on the local culture and traditions, much like his creation.

In terms of doing traditional and digital art, Arnante prefers the latter for its convenience. “I mostly used to just practice traditional art, especially back in junior high when I was a contestant for various art contests,” he elaborated. “Starting senior high, that was when I can say that I fully transitioned to digital art. I still practice traditional art from time to time, like I sketch on a sketchpad occasionally. I never really liked buying expensive art materials, there are a lot more opportunities, and overall the amount of things that you can do digitally is a lot more than doing traditional.”

As an aspiring concept artist, Arnante values practicing and mastering the fundamentals of drawing over emphasizing a particular art style. “Art style will just come soon after. And personally, also, I want to be able to adapt to any kind of style, I think it makes me more valuable as an artist.” He chose to do 2D pixel art for his project because it was much easier given the constraints he had to work with.

Behind the Project

One Last Game was born as a senior project for Arnante and his primary motivation was simply to pass his subject. However, during the process, he also wanted to apply much of what he learned in game development. He also drew on his admiration for old-school 16-bit games to develop this project. “The overall story was based on my experience of moving from Manila to here in Bicol. But the events in the game like Danny, the protagonist, playing with his friends were not from my experiences. When we left, it was raining and I could not really say goodbye properly to my friends back there, so this game was like the events that I wished that I did before moving,” he recalled.

Arnante notes that the main difficulties when it came to the development of the game mostly fell on the programming side. “Before our actual Senior Project 2 (the development of the game), we only had 1 prior coding subject, and it was a different language. I had to basically learn a lot of basic to complicated things in coding.” Moreover, he only had around three months to completely develop the game.

Thankfully, Arnante had a lot of avenues to seek guidance. He diligently followed YouTube tutorials alongside his professors who taught him the basics of game development. “I also had a friend who is a CS major, Gerald, who helped me a lot during the development. Whenever I was not getting what was wrong, or when my initial code had a lot of bugs, I ran to him for advice and troubleshooting.”

On To The Next

Being a Senior, Arnante is already set for graduation in June next year. Afterward, he plans to apply for different studios within the country to build his experience and portfolio. However, he aims to land a job overseas where there are more opportunities for his type of work in the video game industry. Currently, Arnante is also part of a development team for a PH-inspired mobile fighting game. He focuses on the character designs of the playable characters.

He and his friend Gerald have also been talking about developing another game as a passion project. But, there are no concrete plans as of the moment and they just plan to see where it will lead them. Aside from game development, Arnante also accepts commissions. Follow his Instagram account @pautaters to view more of his artwork. His portfolio is also available on Artstation at www.artstation.com/pautaters.