Today we’d like to introduce you to Hunter Cowdery.
Hi Hunter, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
It all started when I was in my programming class in 10th grade. We were learning how to make apps and programs and it hit me: what if I made a game about walking through a creepy place, like a hospital, and the goal was to investigate ghosts? I dived into the idea immediately and started working out how the program would work until I quickly realized how hard it was to make a game (kinda funny). I mainly specialize in writing and now I have been writing for 7 years, ever since 6th grade, so I could write the game, I just couldn’t make the game. After the period I immediately went to one of my best friends, Darryth, who was in Modeling and Simulation. They were learning how to make games in that class, so I told him about my idea about a horror game set in a hospital and he agreed. That began a now 2 year long project. I immediately started on designing the map for the game and I had it done at the end of the day. We then poured hours of our time into the story and we had it done in a week. That story then snowballed into us writing a franchise of different games and stories that we call, “The N.E.P.S.T.O. Files”. Me and my friend Darryth then formed Breaking Bell Productions. For the first year was really just planning and writing, we had a lot of school going on so we had to put it on the back burner for a bit. Then we wanted to generate hype for this franchise so we pulled together a cast & crew for Breaking Bell Productions. We made teasers of the story by writing scripts. Now we have gotten to a point where we want to release our first game which we call “Piercing Afterlight”. It is the first installment of the franchise and it kicks off the mystery and questions that will be asked now and years to come.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I wish I could say it’s been really easy, but the truth is, it’s not. We have put in countless hours and sleepless nights to even get to where we are now. That saying of “nothing comes for free” is so true. You have to work for everything. One of the challenges we had early on with making the teasers was the scheduling/logistics of it. The first teaser we did was kind of willy nilly. We gave our voice actors a deadline for the lines, they were a little bit late and editing took a lot longer than usual so we ended up releasing the teaser a month after we expected it to come out. We then decided to structure ourselves within the business quarters and have goals for each quarter which has worked out really well. We also learned to give our voice actors a deadline, but also build in two extra weeks after the deadline in case they’re a bit late on sending them in (we are all high school kids so we have to work around tests and school work). We also built in time for editing and now the teasers and everything comes out exactly when we want it too. Same with development for the “Piercing Afterlight” game. We had to work out the logistics of everything. There are so many moving parts and so many separate departments that all have to come together and integrate perfectly and so far that has gone well and we’re on schedule. So like I said, it takes a lot of work to achieve your dreams and we’ve learned a lot from making mistakes.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
So I am a writer and I have been writing for 7 years. I have written two fanfics – after quickly moving away from that – I have written/started on a sci-fi franchise idea (for the future), a historical fiction military book about 9/11, a medieval story (probably one of my favorite pieces), and (again) another different sci-fi franchise idea. However the one I’m most proud of working on is Breaking Bell Productions and “The N.E.P.S.T.O. Files”. Both me and Darryth have written out and written the story for that franchise. The story we’ve created is just so… Beautiful and yet scary. The friendships, the betrayals, the secrets, the hatred, the love is so captivating that you become lost in the story. I constantly find myself picking a plot point in the timeline we’ve made and play the scene out in my head. How the characters look, how they interact. The horrific scenes as well as the beautiful and heartfelt scenes. It’s really exciting because “Piercing Afterlight” will be the first ever release I’ve partaken in. It’ll be the first thing with my name in the credits as an official full creative piece. I definitely have a lot of things and a lot of amazing stories planned down the road, but right now I am just in love with our story.
Before we go, is there anything else you can share with us?
So funny story about how we came up with the name for Breaking Bell Productions. True story too! Early on we needed to call ourselves something, so we went through multiple names, but we didn’t really like anything. We spent probably a few days trying to come up with something, we kept looking around the room for objects for inspiration, but nothing stuck. UNTIL I looked in the bottom right corner of the desktop we were using to write the timeline and I saw the little Windows notification button and it was a bell. I was sitting next to Darryth and I turned to him and said, “Bell” and after a little bit of us looking at each other he replied, “Breaking Bell” and we both started laughing because it was a really cool name – we loved it! We did extensive research to see if anyone had taken the name previously and no one had done it so we chose that as our name. Breaking Bell Productions. It’s probably one of my favorite times of us working on the project.
Pricing:
- We’re broke high school kids trying to make it big so everyone who’s working on the project (including us) is working for free with the hope of it doing well. Needless to say, we don’t have any pricing information.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://sites.google.com/view/breakingbellproductions?usp=sharing
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@BreakingBellProductions
Image Credits
Amelia Torman, Serial X, Alex Oliver
