ED Co. Logo over time

The Exploding Donkey company was technically created sometime prior to 2015, when three young men 'designed' a game in grade school. The Exploding Donkey name was decided upon at this early time and though the logo has gone through several stages, the name always stuck. The very first game was made with MS Paint graphics (Windows 7) and a printer on regular and cardstock paper. It was finished on November 11 of 2016, with an incomplete ruleset playtested only once. No attempt was ever made to sell the game.

Board Game Era (2016-2018)

When the company was first incepted by Middle Schoolers the goal was to make video games, like any other kids of the time. This goal seemed too high and so understanding the nature of the company having highly limited assets and no skills, it was decided that board games would be the focus. There were only two board games that were brought into a techincally playable state, Instillations in 2016 and Weather in 2017. These were never distributed, mostly due to leadership seeking too high of a production volume, and so only one to two hand-screened test versions exist in ED Co. HQ.

This first era was wonderful but entirely unsuccessful, but it was 2018 that saw a significant development...

Death Atoll Era (2018-2019)

Sometime in 2018, the company suddenly gained access to the Gamemaker: Studio software. The program is very condusive to novice users, and after some initial uncertainty and hesitation, an ambitious but very primitive game began development. There were actually two games that began at around the same time: Death Atoll and Warriors and Wagons. Death Atoll was a space opera bullet hell game and Warriors and Wagons was a 2D third-person rpg/bullet hell game. Within a month or so Warriors and Wagons had ceased to be worked on, as resources could not be split between two of the same type of projects. The original Warriors and Wagons project was actually lost, possibly due to a computer failure, but all of the sprite assets were on another computer and so were saved. Warriors and Wagons was put to rest for the time being, but not forgotten...

Death Atoll emerged as the project of focus for the next two years. The game was developed decently far, with a dozen playable levels and menus, but it was plagued with plot holes, art inconsistencies, and ever-heightening expectations. An important note is that Death Atoll was the first project to be set in the Exploding Donkey Gamematic Universe. In 2018, Death Atoll was the victim of a file corruption and the game broke. This was surprisingly not offputting enough to kill the project, and so the code was rewritten and the assets reimported and the project continued.

Now in High School, the company's managers had an opportunity to use two weeks of class time to create any project they wanted. It was quickly decided that this opportunity would be used to attempt to revive Warriors and Wagons. Development began immediately with planning and coding. A moderate amount of additional sprites were drawn and the game became playable in a Minimum Viable Product stage. The class was impressed by the presentation and the game was entertaining albeit basic. The two weeks ended and Warriors and Wagons development couldn't continue any longer, as Death Atoll was in full swing, but the idea of the 3rd person bullet hell RPG stuck around.

Some time later in 2020, Death Atoll development was suddenly suspended. The reason was simple, the company members were more skilled and could use a fresh start, free from the low-quality coding of Death Atoll. Thus, a new option was considered...

Defend the Fief Era (2019-2023)

Techincally, a new project called Defend the Fief was created in 2019, but it hadn't began serious development until 2020. Defend the Fief was finally a project that would capture the Warriors and Wagons idea. Matter of fact, the earliest stages of Defend the Fief reuse assets from the older project. Defend the Fief started with a simple bullet hell arcade idea, but the plans rapidly expanded and the game's plans became bigger and more complex every day, something that would eventually contribute to the project's notable fall.

Defend the Fief was still in the Gamemaker engine and was developed off-and-on for almost four years. In terms of programming, the game was actually very complex, with more features than really necessary, and this caused new features to regularly break old ones, causing the code to eventually become impossible to maintain. The sprite work also went through several stages, each improving on the last, with the main disadvantage being that old assets had to constantly be replaced. The final 2020 art style was not bad, but the nonexistent lighting system of Gamemaker combined with the visual expectations the company had for the game caused dissatisfaction with the project.

An important note is that Defend the Fief was the first project that had serious development of an Official Soundtrack. Music was made in Sonar 7 by one member and started off in 2019 was very MIDI-sounding, short songs and ended in 2020 with much more complete arrangements. Several songs from the soundtrack are available on the 2021-2022 Sampler CD.

Additionally, 2020 saw the first usage of the Unity engine. The company created a silly test project to learn a new coding language (and how to make a 3D game) called The Game that is Called X, which is available for play on this website! The game has seen several updates and is being considered for heavier devlopment due to good new ideas about how the game should work.

Planning Defend the Fief was fun for the members, but ultimately the game became overly-complicated and inconsistent and there was far too little progress for the timeframe. This eventually reached a breaking point in January of 2023, which led to the writing of The Westwood Plan...

Westwood Plan Era (2023-Now)

The Westwood Plan was a major company meeting that finally discussed and investigated the ability of the company to produce Defend the Fief (or a game similar to it). The members were all either graduated or graduating high school and it was time to decide whether or not to abandon the ED Co. idea. Your ability to read this webpage should demonstrate the option the meeting chose. The company was going to settle on a title, Crisis Commander, that would be finally made outside of Gamemaker: Studio and would be properly planned. The game was planned and features were decided immediately, rather than as the project progressed, to avoid the same pitfall as Defend the Fief. The company is more effective and organized than ever. Crisis Commander is feasible and has progressed more in six months than Defend the Fief had in three years. A new real-time strategy game that isn't exactly fantasy or sci-fi; a game that is fun and code that is airtight. Be on the look out for this game in 2025, you won't regret it.

As you may also notice, The Game that is Called X also recieved some work, and if it is at all any good than we would be hyped to work on it further.

Ever since that early point, ED Co. has never died and its plans have adjusted to modernity over the years. The original essence of the ideas of children still lives on in the classic parts of the EDGU, ED Co.'s most valuable asset. As a general rule, we try to explore different stories/aspects of the world with every different project.