Founded by just one person, Raccoo Venture teaches valuable lessons

The task of developing a game, from the initial idea to the final version, involves hard work and many challenges that are invisible to those who play it. The standard in a multi-billion dollar industry is large teams and all sorts of tools and methods to make the process as smooth as possible.

Raccoo Venture is one of the cases that escapes this pattern not by choice but by necessity. Just as the raccoon hero in the kingdom of Verta often endures trials and challenges alone, on the other side of the screen, his creator, independent developer Diego Ras, had to face all sorts of challenges alone for five years to bring his game to modern video game consoles .

At 39, Diego was born into a typical Brazilian family in the region considered the cradle of industry around one of the world’s largest cities, the country’s capital São Paulo. Due to the typical difficulties of a metalworking family, Diego came into contact with games and technology late in life. Always a few steps behind the most modern consoles, he had his first contact with games at the age of 8 and his first computer at the age of 21.

For Diego, making a living playing games seemed a very distant and impossible reality until then. He graduated from a technical school for mechatronics and then studied design. He entered the advertising industry and worked there for years until he suffered from burnout due to the fast and chaotic pace of work.

He quit his job and decided to split his time between freelance work and starting his big project. Raccoo Venture. His entire professional career up to this point had given him a certain ease in the creative and design aspects and, due to his technical knowledge, also in programming. But when Diego made this decision, he had to give up some things and began to strictly control his savings in order to get the game going. Nevertheless, his reserves were used up and he had to borrow money.

Even his father, his biggest supporter, eventually helped financially as best he could. But in 2019 the bad news came: his father was diagnosed with cancer. Now it was time for Diego to financially help his father, who, during his many visits to the hospital, wanted to know most about whether the game was ready and how the project was progressing.

The choice of genre and hero was no coincidence. When he started his project in 2018, he missed the more colorful and cuddly games of his childhood. The raccoon always had a villain stigma, as its fur almost always looked like a thief’s mask or something similar. But this mask could also be that of a hero like Zorro, for example!

The part that took up most of the developer’s time was the level design, not because it was exactly labor intensive, but because Diego wanted a game balance that would make the game progressive and of course fun for players.

Throughout this process, Diego needed a lot of poise and determination to bring Raccoo to the screens of players around the world in a game that is closely tied to his personal story. And that’s exactly why the developer never thought about giving up. On the contrary, he learned valuable lessons that he would like to share with any developer looking to make their first game.

He says if someone did it, he can do it too. Nothing is impossible. If you do it alone, the only difference is that it takes longer. With hard work, dedication, discipline and study you can achieve it or at least achieve it. Especially because the most important thing is the journey and everything you learn along the way, and not necessarily the final destination.

Diego knows this Raccoo Venture could be a lot better than it already is. But what he really hopes is that the adventures through the kingdom of It is worth it Manage to put a smile on the faces of the players who decide to do so. And of course, the game brings back wonderful memories for those who, like him, spent hours as a child collecting items and jumping through a colorful fantasy kingdom. That would be his greatest reward.

Diego’s father Edvaldo died in 2023 and, as the game’s biggest supporter, never lived to see its completion. But all players around the world will play that role for him. Have fun with the game that tells two incredible stories about two beloved, likeable, stubborn and funny characters: Raccoo and Diego Ras.