Last Call

Yukon Wainczak, video game designer

Sarah Connell Sanders

Special to Worcester Magazine USA TODAY NETWORK

Yukon Wainczak is one-third of the game studio Snoozy Kazoo. Last year, Wainczak’s entry in Mass DiGI’s Game Challenge pitch contest, “Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion,” took the grand prize. “Turnip Boy” has already been named one of 2021’s most anticipated indie games by some of the industry’s leading in uencers — Polygon and Rock Paper Shotgun. It will be released next month.

What is your connection to Worcester?

I went to Becker College in Worcester for interactive media and game design. Throughout my time there, I worked a lot with MassDiGI. I did their internship over the summer and I was also very active with on-campus activities. I was the vice president of the International Game Developers Association chapter there. I’ve been into game development since I was 11. I found that everyone in the Becker community really pushed each other to do better. Shortly after I graduated, last December, I started a studio and got a publisher for the game we’re working on, “Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion.” It’s been a wild ride.

Tell me more about your studio, Snoozy Kazoo.

The studio is made up of Jennifer Kindl, Jordan Kegler and me. We all live in di erent places, so we were used to working virtually even before the pandemic. We built the game online.

What’s the premise of “Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion”?

It all begins with a rowdy turnip. The evil Mayor Onion takes Turnip Boy away from his greenhouse after he’s caught committing tax evasion. As Mayor Onion, you make Turnip Boy do all the dirty deeds. There’s an old abandoned barn that Mayor Onion is trying to turn into the town hall and you have to clear out all of the animals from the barn. There are a lot of darker undertones. It’s just a crazy wacky story with all these quirky and weird characters.

In terms of your personal role, are you on the creative side or the computer science side of game design?

That is actually a very hard question because we are such a small team. We all wear many di erent hats. I would argue I’m primarily the programmer, but I also do the business production for the game, and then I also do a lot of the pixel art.

I’ve heard there is quite a bit of hype in the indie game scene around your “Turnip Boy” release. How did you build momentum?

Originally, when I started making “Turnip Boy,” it was just for fun. What ended up happening is I got a booth at BostonFIG. I chipped in with another friend and we both wanted to have a booth together. I used that as a motivator to actually build some type of demo or something that people could play. People loved it! They went absolutely crazy. There was a line just to play “Turnip Boy.” I’ll be honest, the game wasn’t great back then. I’m still proud of it, but it needed work. We quickly started up a mailing list at BostonFIG. Ever since then, we’ve been posting it online and

Jennifer Kindl, Yukon Wainczak, and Jordan Kegler of the Snoozy Kazoo game studio. SUBMITTED PHOTO

on Twitter. We’ve been experimenting with other social media sites, like TikTok. We built communities on Reddit and Discord. We started to see people posting YouTube videos of them playing the demo we put out and then people posting fan art.

When is the o cial release?

I can con rm it will be in April of this year.

What platform will it be available on?

It’s coming out on Nintendo Switch and it’s also coming out on Steam for Windows, Mac and Linux.

How do you feel about Becker’s potential closure?

It’s really sad. There’s a lot of anxiety and stress for private colleges right now. For my friends and me, it feels like part of our college experience will vanish. I’m happy to have had time there, but it de nitely feels like it’s dissipating.

I don’t know a lot about the industry, but I know it’s growing very quickly. How would you suggest someone get started?

I would heavily suggest doing a game jam. There are tons of them online. You can just search “game jam” and you’ll nd thousands and thousands. I started at a very early age and that helped me a ton. Being able to have the experience of putting a game together and release it online is empowering, even if it does very poorly and only 10 people play it and nine of them hate it. I just love the experience of getting something out there and being able to say, “I made this, and I can make more things and even bigger things.” Most game jams last 48 hours. They give you a theme, and you have a set period of time to go make a game, and we all support each other in doing that. It’s a wonderful thing for beginners; I’ve done an insane amount of them. I would highly recommend game jams for anyone who wants to get started.