Eric Cowette

Hi, I'm Eric! I'm currently a Game Production student at Champlain College. I graduate in May 2025.

Poly-Vinyl Pests!

Poly-Vinyl Pests! is a 2-player twin stick shooter boss rush game set in a world where humanity is long gone, and plastics have taken over the world by mutating pests and animals. Two rival ant colonies have sent out drones to both squash plastic-mutated pests and each other in order to win glory for their colony. This game was made by Team IDX Legends for their capstone project at Champlain College starting in August, and is still ongoing.

On this project, I am working as one of two producers on a team of 15 people. I am taking on a more backend role on this project, working more closely with our Steam and itch.io pages, building our arcade cabinet, and managing our various trackers and spreadsheets.

The main obstacle I have had to overcome working on this project so far has been dividing the work between two producers. Neither of us had ever worked on a project with another producer so far, so we had a tough time initially deciding what to do so both of us had enough work each sprint. We overcame this problem through mainly just deliberation over who wants to do what during sprint planning and throughout the sprint, and we eventually each found our own area of expertise to pursue.

What I've learned so far working on this project is that I really like not only working with another producer, but that I also enjoy the new type of work that I'm doing.

Villainous Intent

Villainous Intent is a 2-player physics based party game in which a group of D-list supervillains are trying to make their big break by robbing the house of a retired famous superhero. This game was made by Team Rotten Eggs for our capstone project at Champlain College, developed between August and December of 2024.

On this project, I worked as a producer on a team of 9 people, including myself. Our roster consisted of a bunch of friends, which worked well in they way that we had minimal interpersonal issues, but came with some unique problems. Namely, we thought that being friends would help us work together well, which proved to be a tougher challenge than we anticipated. I was able to keep our group productive by setting strict cutoffs for when work was to be completed by for a sprint, and setting clear sprint goals that kept the team on track to hit our goals.

Ultimately, what I learned from this project was that it's not always the best idea to work with your friends, and sometimes it's better to work with people you don't already know.

Liminal Detective

Liminal Detective is a story-driven dungeon crawler in which you play as Maira, a half-demon investigator who is trying to solve the murder of Joseph, her estranged half-brother. This game was made by Team Forsaken Hearts for our Studio II project at Champlain College, developed between January and May of 2024.

On this project, I worked as a producer on a team of 10 people, including myself. This was everyone's first time working on a more lengthy project, having taken up an entire semester as opposed to just 4-6 weeks. This came with its own unique challenges for the team, mainly that we weren't sure what a project this long would be like. I was able to help the team progress through this challenge by utilizing milestones throughout the project, which helped us chunk out the timeline of the project instead of looking too far ahead and being constantly stressed about the end goal.

The biggest things I learned from working on this project were how to pace myself so that I can get through a longer project without getting burnt out, and furthering my production techniques to be just as useful in the first few weeks as in the last few weeks.