Current Projects

I’m excited to introduce BadTrip, our first official video game development project and a major milestone for our team.

BadTrip is a four-player, wave-based co-op shooter centered around a simple premise that spirals into complete chaos. The story follows four friends who head out on a hiking trip in the woods. While exploring, they come across a mysterious mushroom. One questionable decision later, reality begins to unravel and the forest transforms into a distorted, hostile hallucination.

From a gameplay perspective, players must survive increasingly intense waves of enemies and manifestations of their collective bad trip. Familiar forest critters become exaggerated, unsettling monsters. Squirrels dart unpredictably with glowing eyes and jagged teeth, deer loom unnaturally tall in the fog, and woodland creatures twist into bizarre, jump-scare-inducing threats. The goal is simple: fight your way through the BadTrip.

Each playable character has a distinct identity and abilities. They can be leveled up individually, allowing players to invest in their preferred playstyle over time. Every character also features a unique active ability governed by a cooldown system, encouraging timing, coordination, and strategic synergy within the team. Whether it’s crowd control, burst damage, or defensive support, these abilities are designed to create high-intensity cooperative moments.

Beyond the core wave survival loop, BadTrip rewards exploration and experimentation. Players can uncover hidden secrets scattered throughout the warped forest and complete special hidden objectives that unlock encounters with secret world bosses. These bosses represent deeper layers of the hallucination. Larger, more surreal manifestations of the trip that challenge both mechanical skill and team coordination.

Tonally, we’re striking a deliberate balance. While the game leans into unsettling imagery and sudden jump scares. Yes, including some very weird squirrels, it also embraces strong comedic elements. The dialogue, character interactions, and absurd enemy designs are meant to keep players laughing just as often as they’re startled. We want the experience to feel chaotic, unpredictable, and entertaining rather than purely dark.

The atmosphere is further elevated by a heavy psychedelic metal soundtrack. The music plays a critical role in shaping the identity of BadTrip, blending distorted riffs, hypnotic rhythms, and surreal audio textures to amplify both the intensity of combat and the strangeness of the environment. It’s loud, trippy, and unapologetically bold, perfectly matching the escalating madness on screen.

At its core, BadTrip is about cooperative survival wrapped in a surreal, comedic nightmare. It’s fast-paced, replayable, and built around the idea that even in the middle of chaos, teamwork, and a good sense of humor can carry you through.

This project represents Pereira Studios’ first step into game development, and we’re focused on delivering an experience that’s memorable, distinctive, and unapologetically creative.

I can share that BadTrip is currently in a very early stage of development. Right now, our focus isn’t on polish or large-scale content — it’s on building the foundation correctly.

We are actively developing and refining the core gameplay mechanics. That means prototyping movement systems, combat flow, enemy behavior, wave pacing, and ability cooldown structures. At this stage, we’re asking fundamental questions: Does the movement feel responsive? Is combat satisfying? Do abilities feel impactful? Does the chaos feel controlled rather than frustrating?

Because BadTrip is designed as a fast-paced, four-player co-op wave shooter, the “feel” of the game is absolutely critical. Handling needs to be tight. Shooting needs to feel responsive and rewarding. Enemy waves need to escalate in a way that feels intense but fair. We’re running internal tests, adjusting values constantly, and iterating quickly to dial in that balance.

We’re also experimenting with early versions of the character abilities to ensure each one feels distinct and meaningful. Since players will be able to level up characters individually, it’s important that progression feels powerful without breaking the core gameplay loop. That balance starts now, at the mechanical level.

In short, we are in a prototype-heavy phase. This is where ideas are tested, refined, and sometimes scrapped entirely if they don’t serve the overall vision. It’s a highly creative and technical stage, and arguably one of the most important phases of development. Getting the core handling and gameplay loop right now ensures everything we build on top of it like bosses, secrets, soundtrack integration, and comedic elements will stand on solid ground.

While it’s early, this stage is incredibly exciting. We’re shaping the identity of BadTrip from the ground up, ensuring that when players eventually step into the woods, the experience feels intentional, polished, and unforgettable.

Project : Rouge Pilot is an upcoming voxel-styled roguelike bullet hell game currently in early development at Pereira Studio.

Players take control of experimental military mechs and fight through overwhelming waves of hostile android soldiers inside a massive top secret military training compound. The facility was originally created to train pilots for a new mech initiative, but each simulation becomes increasingly dangerous as the android forces adapt and grow stronger over time.

The gameplay focuses heavily on fast paced arcade combat, replayability, and progressive character growth. Players begin each run with a basic mech and must survive relentless enemy attacks while collecting experience and currency throughout each area. Leveling up allows players to improve their mech’s stats and combat effectiveness, while collected currency can be used to purchase upgrades, weapons, and enhanced equipment.

Each area concludes with a major boss encounter designed to push the player’s build, movement, and reaction skills to their limits. As players progress deeper into the compound, the difficulty scales aggressively, creating a constant risk versus reward gameplay loop that rewards skill, experimentation, and adaptability.

One of the game’s major design goals is replayability. Different pilots will feature unique personalities capable of altering the tone of gameplay, dialogue style, and even the in-game music, helping each run feel distinct and memorable.

The project was originally inspired by a close friend’s passion for bullet hell games and evolved into a larger concept focused on blending the intensity of bullet hell combat with the progression systems and replay value of modern roguelikes.

What helps Project : Rouge Pilot stand out is its combination of voxel-based visuals, fast arcade style mech combat, bullet hell gameplay mechanics, roguelike progression systems, personality driven pilot variations, and long term expandability for future content. The overall goal of the project is to create a highly replayable experience that can continue growing over time while also introducing new players to the roguelike and bullet hell genres in an approachable and exciting way.

Current development is focused primarily on creating the game’s visual assets and establishing a strong artistic foundation for the project. Work is currently underway on designing player mechs, hostile android enemies, weapon models, upgrade parts, and interchangeable equipment pieces for both enemies and pilots. This stage of development is focused on ensuring the game has a strong visual identity before deeper gameplay systems and mechanics are implemented.

The next major goal for development is continuing production of game-ready assets in order to build a strong content foundation before full gameplay implementation begins. Upcoming priorities include expanding the library of mech models, creating additional enemy variants, designing more weapon types and upgrade parts, and further establishing the visual direction of the world itself. The long term objective is to create enough core assets and visual consistency to allow gameplay systems and world development to progress smoothly in later stages of production.