Gilliam's Great Escape turns a toaster into a golf controller
The 2023 Game Developers Conference will once again feature Alt.Ctrl.GDC, an exhibition dedicated to games that use alternative control schemes and interactions in new, exciting, and clever ways. Ahead of GDC 2023, Game Developer will be talking to the developers of each of the games that have been selected for the showcase.
Gilliam's Great Escape is about playing golf with a fish. Except you'll be playing it with a toaster controller—the perfect tool for launching things.
Deegan Kosen, one of the programmers on the game, spoke with Game Developer about the thought process that lead to playing golf by launching a fish from a toaster, the challenges that came from making the most out of a toaster's possible inputs, and the natural appeal of a toaster's mechanisms that lead them to using it as their input mechanism.
What’s your name, and what was your role on this project?
My name is Deegan Kosen. My role was as one of the gameplay programmers for the project.
How do you describe your innovative controller to someone who’s completely unfamiliar with it?
It's a toaster we all know and love, but now you can play with it. Push and release the lever to shoot, and turn the dial to rotate.
What's your background in making games?
I don't have much of a history of making games. I learned game programming in high school as a hobby and then got into game programming. I made a couple of small games for fun and now I am currently in a game design program.
What development tools did you use to build Gilliam's Great Escape?
For Gilliam's Great Escape we used the Godot game engine and the Arduino API to handle the toaster's input. For the 3D models, we used Blender.
What inspired the creation of Gilliam's Great Escape, a game about launching a
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