December 2, 2015

A new video game developed by recent Digital Media and Music Industry alumni, now members of the game studio PHL Collective, is available on Xbox One. Clusterpuck 99, which was released in September, is an 8-player sports game built for parties and friendly trash talk. Players compete to gain control of a puck and access to their opponents’ goal, avoiding spikes and cliffs and utilizing speed boosts to blast past other players in local multiplayer matches. It was developed by 2013 Digital Media alumni Bren King, Brian Gitlin and Ryan Reed, with sound design by Music Industry alum John Sepa (’14) and QA testing by current Game Art & Production student and project intern, Tom Trahey (’16). Clusterpuck 99 has been presented at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) and the Smithsonian Institute.

Environment Artist and co-designer of Clusterpuck 99, Bren King describes how the game began as a side project of programmer Terry DiFeliciantonio. “During our lunch breaks and after work, we would all sit together and play his prototype for hours. After playing the game for about a month straight, we decided to make it our next big project,” King says. Co-designer Brian Gitlin, 3D Character Artist at PHL Collective, served as Technical Artist, and Environment Artist Ryan Reed served as Console Engineer. Sound Designer John Sepa is also a member of PHL Collective, which was founded in 2013 and is comprised of local artists and programmers driven to deliver creative and compelling game experiences.

Clusterpuck 99 has been showcased at industry events such as PAX Prime, ID@Xbox Pre-Pax Event, Casual Connect San Francisco, Unite 2015, Magfest and GamerCamp.  Click here to purchase the game on Xbox One.