About Our Company
Will and Mackenzie, the founders of WM Games, both have a passion for working with and teaching children. WM Games first, and only game, is Trash Dash. Trash Dash was created by Will and Mackenzie during a four week studio they attended at the NUVU program in Cambridge Massachusetts. The main goal of the studio was to create tablet games for ages 11-15 in Kenya and India. Both founders of WM Games enjoy programming and animating, making the studio a perfect fit for both of them. They both ultimately wanted to create an environmental game that would be fun and teach students how to properly dispose garbage. It took them two weeks to conceive and develop the idea of Trash Dash before they started prototyping. After a long four weeks, WM Games was created and their first game was a success.
Our Philosophy 

 Will and Mackenzie are close in age with the students they created Trash Dash for. They felt it was easy for them to judge if 11-15 year olds would enjoy their game. Programming wise they both did not have much experience, but enjoyed it alot. They had never had training with programming before but picked it up quite easily. Will and Mackenzie have had much experience with photoshop and created the graphics with ease.

Key Players

Will Truslow, Game designer, Programmer

Will Truslow is a Junior at Beaver Country Day School. His interests include filmmaking,

Mackenzie Donahue, UI designer, visual designer

Mackenzie Donahue is a tenth grader attending Beaver Country Day School. Her interests are photography, community service, and traveling. Mackenzie is a part of a community service group called ASC. She spends most of her time worker with homeless kids from ages three to twenty. When Mackenzie teaches the kids something new she feels very accomplished. Her experience teaching kids had definitely helped prepare her for creating educational games. Being interested in photography and photoshop was perfect for visual design. Mackenzie strived when it came to creating graphics. Traveling is another one of Mackenzies passions. “I really hope someday I can play the games I have created with children around the world” said Mackenzie.

Pitch

Many children around the world think it is okay to litter, which is contributing to all kinds of environmental issues. Trash Dash is an addictive, tablet-based superhero game, that educates players on the proper disposal of trash. The more bottles, paper, and other trash the player disposes of, the more points they wins. Trash Dash is a fun, interactive way to learn about the difference any one person can make by removing litter from the environment.

Reward System

The reward system is a great way to get kids to want to do something. In Trash Dash, when trash is collected, points are earned. A high score page will also be included. This adds a competitive aspect to the game which makes it more fun.  Whoever collects the most trash, gains the most points, and gets on the highscore page.

Obstacles 

In Trash Dash, you are not only picking up trash, but you are avoiding cars and other obstacles. Adding these challenges contribute to the addictive power of Trash Dash, as players want to repeat levels to anticipate and avoid all obstacles and raise their score.

Character 

The main character is a superhero named Hodari. Hodari is based off of a Kenyan character named Makmende. Makmende stops people from doing bad things. In Trash Dash there is a Matatu littering trash. Hodari (the player) is following it collecting as much trash as he can. Much like Makmende, Hodari is trying to stop people from doing bad things.

Technical Requirements 

The Trash Dash prototype was created with a combination of Game Maker 8 and Balsamiq Mockups. For future versions of the game, development will be completed using Unity. The game is predominantly an action game, with drag and drop functionality in the bonus levels.

Visual Development 

The visual look of Trash Dash is cartoon-y without being overly imaginative and zany. While the main character is a super hero, factors such as gravity are not overlooked and still play a factor in the user-experience. Most of the animations are sub-par at best with pixelation marrying a few of the assets and sprites. If the creators had more time they would certainly have improved the quality of this, possibly adding different styles of the character doing different things as opposed to standing still.