Who calls their business Team Super Panda? Me! It is a great name even though it tells you absolutely nothing about what we do. Probably goes against every marketing 101 lesson...
Who we are
Team Super Panda is a place where I can build things and put my projects out into the world. It is run by me, Adam, though other people have helped on projects over the years, which is where the word "team" comes from.
How we started
We started out fixing Game Boys and other Nintendo handhelds, then drifted into software. If you ever get the chance, open up a Game Boy. It is incredible tech. Look at what Nintendo still do inside the Switch and it is surprising how much of the Game Boy is still in there.
What we build
The idea behind our software is simple: I do not want to track people. I do not want to run systems where people have to log in just to use an app. I do not want to email people and beg for their attention. If you want to use our apps, that is all I could ask for.
Fox and Pandoo were our first apps. Others have come and gone, and I recently decided to archive and delete a few projects. Keeping Fox and Pandoo was a deliberate decision. Sure, you could knock something like them together now with AI, but that is not the point. I never advertised either app and yet here we are with hundreds of people using them. There are plenty of apps like them out there, but people are using mine. Rock on!
Most of what we make is free and open-source. Homeward is the first game we are taking to Steam, and I cannot wait. Making the Team Super Panda game and releasing it on itch.io was fun, but it was built in Game Boy Studio, which felt quite limiting at the time. After researching what felt like thousands of game engines, Godot seemed like the best choice for Homeward. I will write about why I made that decision at some point.
Falcon is the biggest project I am currently working on, and I am doing it all on my own. AI is great at coding, apart from the coding mistakes. It has been interesting working out how to fit it into my workflow, but I am not into vibe coding. Not because AI writes bad code. Because shipping software you cannot read, fix or maintain is how people's data ends up in a leak, and it is always someone else's data that pays for it. I have no problem with people building things with AI. I have a problem with people selling things they cannot look after. Anyway, that is another post I will write about at a later date, I am sure.
The journal
The journal is where we write about all of it. A random idea to build a virtual pinball machine at breakfast turned into me actually building one, and I will slowly add more to that when I can. Other posts will cover software, and I will keep going with what I call studio updates: what we are working on next, what we got wrong, and what we want to do. Some of it will be useful. Some of it will read like the diary of a madman, and that is fine by me.
Projects for the future: a comic book, books, more software, and a few ideas for more games too.
If you want to follow along, the Atom feed is the best way. If you want to help, buying a coffee or wishlisting Homeward on Steam both work.