MANILA, Philippines – At 24, Kurt Reodica is building an entire world — alone. 

As the founder of Shaggybear Games, he is the sole force behind Lost & Found, an upcoming narrative-driven indie title that explores the emotional weight of the objects we leave behind, and how everyday objects may hold special significance to a specific person. Reodica currently handles everything from the writing, art to coding and programming.

Reodica’s journey into game development began as a kid. 

He recalls a childhood memory of his brother giving him an unplugged controller so he could pretend to be “Player 2” while his brother actually played. That early immersion sparked a lifelong fascination with digital worlds that felt like “magic”.

“Video games are the best way for me to tell the stories in my mind,” he says .

Raised on a steady diet of Cartoon Network shows and the original Xbox’s games in the early aughts, Reodica gravitated toward worlds that blended humor, emotion, and visual experimentation. But it wasn’t just the aesthetics that stayed with him. It was the idea that even the strangest characters had inner lives, untold stories waiting beneath the surface.

Years later, that sensibility would become the backbone of his own game, when he began development for Lost & Found in September 2025.

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Pursuing a passion, and weaving a tale about the joys of a simple life

After finishing his Multimedia Arts course at De La Salle Lipa, and a stint at Puppeteer Animation Studios, he stepped away from a stable job to pursue his own vision.

“I’ve got this passion to tell a story po talaga,” he explains. (I’ve got this passion to really tell a story.)

 That story is visually told through a mixed multimedia pastiche — a style inspired by Cartoon Network’s The Amazing World of Gumball that mixes 2D characters with realistic, 3D environments.

However, Reodica insists the look is more than just an aesthetic choice; it’s a design philosophy. 

Also inspired by the Oscar-nominated 2023 film Perfect Days, which revolved on Japanese public toilet cleaner Hirayama and his simple life, Reodica wants his NPCs (non-playable characters) to feel like the film’s protagonist: ordinary people carrying unseen emotional depth. 

“I want each character to look like they have a story to tell,” he says. “I want it to scream — when you see a character in the game, you’ll be curious, what is his story? Ano ba ‘yung dinadala niya? (What do they carry with them?) Problems, secrets…”.

The core gameplay loop of Lost & Found places the player in the role of Rico, a worker in a failing lost-and-found office who discovers that every object carries a fragment of a life. The idea was born from a YouTube video about a woman who recovered her wallet decades after losing it. “It’s stories that could have been lost,” Reodica notes, emphasizing the impact of returning a lost photograph or a phone.

Right now, he envisions about eight to ten core “lost” items in the game.

In building this world, Reodica also draws inspiration from the recent Filipino game Until Then. He cites it as a “huge inspiration,” particularly in how it utilized world-building and even the protagonist’s phone to tell a “uniquely inspired Filipino story.” For Reodica, seeing a successful local game proved that games could be more than just entertainment — they could be a medium for cultural representation and emotional impact.

The stakes in his game reflect this depth; returning an item to the wrong person can lead to negative outcomes. For example, a struggling baker from Luisiana, the game’s small-town setting, has forgotten her legendary pandesal (bread roll) recipe. Returning her notebook can save her bakery, but giving it to the wrong person leads to bankruptcy. There is even a mystery element where returning objects to the original owner — if they have ill motives — may move the story negatively. You’ll have to judge carefully. 

Reodica is currently focused on finishing a vertical slice — a small, polished, playable portion of the game that showcases its core mechanics, art style, and gameplay loop in their near-final form, shown to potential funders or publishers. He is eyeing a very tentative 2027 release window. 

Challenges in the Philippines, AI stance

Operating as a solo developer in the Philippines presents unique hurdles, from the inability to easily access crowdfund site Kickstarter from the Philippines, to the barrier created by English-only coding tutorials. 

And if he could afford other collaborators, he said he would definitely be willing to take them on… if he had the budget to do so. He knows it’s an expensive endeavor.

Reodica is largely self-taught, utilizing visual coding, which uses coding programs with a graphical element rather than text-based instructions, and obsessive research to bridge his knowledge gaps.

In an era of rapid technological shifts, Reodica maintains a firm stance on the use of artificial intelligence. While he sees AI as a “tool” that can assist with technical research, grammar correction, or answering specific coding questions, he refuses to let it be his “story creator”. 

He is vocal about the ethical caveats, specifically the copyright issues. “I don’t use it for art,” he clarifies, insisting that the core narrative and visual assets must remain human-driven.

Despite his progress, he remains grounded by the magnitude of the task. “I wouldn’t say I’m very confident… I have these thoughts in my mind that this could still burn down to the ground if I make this one mistake,” he admits. Bright-eyed but also acutely aware of the risks.

For Reodica, the goal isn’t just to release a product, but to create something that resonates deeply. “I want Lost and Found to change their lives after they played it,” he says, echoing the way Until Then and other games impacted his own life. “I really want my art to be that way because I’m a very ambitious person”.

His advice to other young Filipino creatives is shaped by the very medium he works in. He views the pursuit of passion not as a straight line, but as a complex narrative. “The path to pursuing your passion will be very non-linear… it will be like video games,” he concludes. “You own your story”. 

In the view of this young and determined creative, the journey is a game too where the results are not always immediate, yet the ability to direct your own narrative is in itself a reward. – Rappler.com