ninjamuffin99
“ninjamuffin99, programmer. Twitter addict (recovering). HOT MESS. He assembled the team that made the game, and wrote the code that gives it life.”
― Friday Night Funkin' Kickstarter campaign description
Cameron William Taylor, better known online as ninjamuffin99, is a Canadian programmer and musician. He is responsible for writing the code for Friday Night Funkin' and creating many of the charts for the game's songs. He is the one who originally came up with the game's concept and assembled the rest of the crew to help create it.
Development History & Involvement
Friday Night Funkin' was initially created for Ludum Dare 47, the 47th game jam hosted by Ludum Dare from the 2nd to the 5th of October, 2020. ninjamuffin99 had found out about Ludum Dare 47 and that it would start shortly in a few hours. Before the theme for the jam was revealed, he had already decided that the game he wanted to create would be a rhythm game. He first contacted Kawai Sprite for the game's music. After some time searching for artists, he eventually came into contact with PhantomArcade and evilsk8r.
The theme of Ludum Dare 47 was revealed to be "Stuck in a Loop," which ninjamuffin99 loosely tied to the rhythm game idea by stating that music is slightly adjacent to looping. Admittedly, he was not all too interested in creating a game that better fit with the jam's theme this time around, unlike with his previous Ludum Dare game jam entries, and mainly wanted an excuse to work on something. With a 72-hour weekend and the team assembled, they set off to create the very first build of Friday Night Funkin' which would now be known as the prototype.
After Ludum Dare 47 concluded, ninjamuffin99 and the rest of the team still had plans to continue working on and improving the game, although not full-time. The game was eventually released on Newgrounds on the 1st of November. The game garnered some attention on Twitter throughout October and November between its original prototype build and the Newgrounds release but started growing in immense popularity through various social media platforms in early December. The game had received much positive reception and high praise for its music, charm and art style. It was and still is considered a demo, with more content and cameos in line to be added before the game is considered finished. ninjamuffin99 has stated that he hopes to see the game released on other platforms such as Steam or the Nintendo Switch once the full game has been developed with at least 10 weeks that each have a different character and many other changes that help make the game more enjoyable and replayable.
On the 18th of April, 2021, the team launched a Kickstarter campaign to develop a full game. With the campaign's conclusion and funding successfully secured, amassing over 2.2 million USD, the game is being developed to become a fully-fledged video game.
Trivia
- Currently, ninjamuffin99 does not have the "99" in his name in the opening sequence for Friday Night Funkin'. This is due to the game's custom font lacking numbers in the same bubble letter style.
- As of December 2020, ninjamuffin99's favorite Friday Night Funkin' character was Girlfriend, with the reason for this being that the former finds Girlfriend cute.[2]
- As stated in a Reddit AMA, one of ninjamuffin99's favorite Nintendo games is Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door.[4]
- ninjamuffin99 trolled Capitol Records through a phone interview about Friday Night Funkin', which was uploaded to Newgrounds in full.[5]
- On the 19th of December, 2023, ninjamuffin99 went into controversy after he and JohnnyUtah made anti-Palestine jokes in a Twitter exchange, with the former saying "no freeing [P]alestine" in one Tweet. This exchange was deleted, and ninjamuffin99 posted a Tweet later that day supporting Palestinian liberation and condemning Israeli war crimes, though he did not apologize for his earlier Tweet.[6] Later that same day, it was revealed that ninjamuffin99 had liked NSFW artworks of underage characters on Twitter and Newgrounds.[7][8][9]
Gallery
ninjamuffin99's Bandcamp and Instagram icon, featuring his persona. Drawn by FuShark.
Photo of ninjamuffin99 sitting at his desk, with his computer screen showing gameplay of Bopeebo.
Artwork of Tankman spray painting ninjamuffin99's face made by PhantomArcade for ninjamuffin99's birthday.
Art of the Friday Night Funkin' developers from the FNF art booklet.
References
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