Friends create award-winning game

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A. Sue Weisler

Gary Porter ’15, left, and current student Dan Plate, with the help of MAGIC Spell Studios at RIT, have created a company that will release their video game Super Daryl Deluxe in the next two years.

For the past three years, Dan Plate and Gary Porter—best friends since high school—have spent their free time creating Super Daryl Deluxe, a 2D slapstick-orientated action video game that draws loosely from their high school experiences and inside jokes.

While the game is not yet complete, it is already winning awards, taking first place in the Visual Quality category of the 2015 Intel University Games Showcase at the Game Developers Conference and the top prize in the Microsoft Imagine Cup U.S. Nationals.

Their company, Dan and Gary Games, is being incubated in MAGIC Spell Studios.

“How often do you get to make a completely absurd game with your best friend?” said Plate, a fourth-year illustration major from Waterloo, N.Y. “Well, my answer would be all too often.”

Plate and Porter ’15 (game design and development) share a passion for being creative and are kicking around the idea of making a YouTube cooking show and writing a screenplay.

“When I decided to attend RIT, I told our group of friends that I wanted make a game about them and how goofy they are,” said Porter. “When Dan transferred to RIT two years later, we started joking about the idea of actually making it.”

Porter is the programmer; Plate is the artist.

The duo co-wrote the six-chapter game, which borrows elements of their lives, including the look of the school, names of characters and even the likeness of a few evil teachers.

The game’s main character, Daryl Whitelaw, is a stereotypical high school kid whose special powers include a hammer that turns into a rhino on a stick when Daryl levels-up. Daryl is the new kid at a school that has been taken over by a group of evil scientists. Through the help of a school janitor, Daryl uncovers the plot and attempts to save the world—all while trying to be the most popular kid at school.

“We are chipping away at the game one chapter at a time,” said Porter, who now works at energy intelligence software and services provider EnerNOC in Boston. “We’re doing things the way we want them done and the game will not be short on content by any means.”

They hope to publish and release Super Daryl Deluxe within two years. A free downloadable demo of the game is available at superdaryldeluxe.com.

Super Daryl Deluxe, a 2D video game, took first place at the Intel University Games Showcase.