Hi, I’m Tianze. This photo was taken at a variety store on University Ave, where I bought a cute rat hat. It was also on this day that I founded my own indie game studio—rathat studio.
I absolutely love playing and making games. The first video game I ever made was a mod for a Koei tactical RPG when I was ten years old. Later, I designed some hand-clapping games and pen-and-paper board games that became popular at school, participated in the development of visual novels and interactive movies, and even published a murder mystery. During the fall quarter, I took Christina and Butch’s CS377G. It was a soulslike course! The pace of making four games in one quarter left me exhausted, but it also unlocked my potential—the most crucial takeaway being how to converge divergent ideas into a playable prototype and continuously iterate based on feedback. I used AI to assist with game programming, and even used it for art and scripting during a winter quarter gamejam. These experiments had their pros and cons for me, and exploring the reasonable boundaries of AI usage in game development is a topic I want to dive into in this course.
Back to rathat, the studio’s debut title, It’s just a burning memory, is an interactive fiction game: you explore a patient’s memories on a retro terminal, return to the last day of summer, and experience a story about sunflowers and fireworks, betrayal and redemption. This game originated from a project I made in the CS377G class, continuously iterating with the help of the teaching team and my classmates. Even after the course ended, I kept polishing the visual effects and resolved music copyright issues. Feel free to try it out! You can find it here: shancha.rathat.top
This game established my style: I love telling stories in games—not through linear narratives, but through interaction, allowing players to connect the dots in their minds, construct the story themselves, and experience aha moments and emotional beats. My two favorite games are Disco Elysium and Cultist Simulator. My favorite game developers and studios include Weather Factory, Project Moon, and Rusty Lake—small teams, rich world-building, and lightweight yet highly distinctive games. Right now, rathat studio is preparing games that feature the following themes: the Backrooms, Y2K nostalgia, lost media, and Borges. If you are also interested, we can unleash our creativity together!
