Game Rant recently sat down with Kitty Calis and JW Nijman, two of the four developers of 2018 indie game Minit. In between projects, the developers of Minit have been working on Minit Fun Racer, a spinoff arcade-style 1-bit racing game, with a unique premise and wholesome goals: all of the proceeds from Minit Fun Racer will be donated to charity, with the goal of targeting specific causes as time goes on.
Some of our questions focused on how exactly the charity aspects would work, and how the decision to make it came about. Kitty and JW also covered some of the ways that the team had fun making Fun Racer, and explained some of their favorite moments and little touches.
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JW: Minit Fun Racer is made by me and Kitty together with Dominic Johann and Jukio. It’s a little one-bit racing game where you race your way through traffic to get to the beach just in time for the sunset. And all proceeds will go to charity forever....
Kitty: We wanted to make a full game and not something that you buy just because it's for charity. It has accessibility options and achievements. It’s like a full game.
JW: As to why we did this, we were in between projects in a way. We had just finished Disc Room and we were figuring out the start of our next bigger thing. It was a perfect window to do something good, make something small, and everyone one the team was in on the idea of it.
Kitty: It really was a passion project... I wanted to make a charity game for some time. It was a matter of getting people back together and finding the right situation. It has been really fun to do, and it has such good energy.
Fun Racer certainly feels more complete than what might be expected of a game made purely for charity, especially at a price point of $2.99. With brief lives lasting only 10 seconds, extended by gathering coins, each run is quick and light. Side missions and extra challenges, plus a shop full of upgrades, add some depth and challenge, making it easy to keep engaged. Still, one of the main draws is the goal of fundraising for charity, so we asked which charities the developers want to target first.
Kitty: We have a few in mind. We are going to start with Doctors Without Borders, but there’s also things like SpecialEffect. We want to stay flexible, because if something happens we’ll be able to chip in.
JW: Yeah, we want to be able to jump in. Last year with the pandemic situation all over the world, it made us realize that if we have an opportunity to do good we should take it. Kitty had the idea of making a game for charity and it felt good.
Kitty: It’s very important to look after one another and help out where you can. This is a way for us to do that.
The developers revealed that it took about two months to make the game from start to finish, which is no insignificant amount of time even between larger projects. Of course, they weren't alone, and described how the game's publisher also got in on the charitable spirit.
JW: It’s just really nice for us to be able to do something for charity. And for the players. This game will cost the same as a cup of coffee, or a sandwich.
Kitty: $2.99, or pay what you want on some stores.
JW: You get a fun game, and at the same time all the money goes to help others. It feels very lucky to be able to work on something like that. Even Devolver Digital said ‘sure, we’ll publish it for free.’ To me that’s amazing, to see that there’s so much good will....
Kitty: We got a lot of help, like Devolver putting in their time. We asked for help from all over and people really pitched in.... I don’t want to get my hopes up, but the bigger it gets the more we can help, and the more people will have a good time too.
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