Bogert Wins Big!

DANIEL GRAY, Contributing Writer

Nickolas Bogert (9) is the winner of the 2026 Hackathon here at North Brunswick Township High School. He created the game “Five Smashes at Freddy’s.” He is also a game developer working on his own game outside of school. He is putting in his own money and self-funding this project. He said, “I’d always see my dad when I was a little kid. He would do stuff, and it looked interesting.”

According to Nickolas Bogert, “I actually started when I was in third grade, and I was very fascinated by how people could create such little things, and I wanted to do that myself.” He mentioned, “I had to learn by myself. How I did it was by watching a couple of videos of people working on small games.” This puts into perspective how people learn. Many people learn from someone who teaches them. However, Bogert taught himself all the work. He continued by sharing his thoughts on the win at the hackathon. He mentioned, “I expected at most second place. I didn’t expect first.”

According to Roberto Suarez Quintana (12), the President of Tech Club, “I definitely noticed that he has experience making games in the past.” “First of all, he was designing his own characters in a way that, in my opinion, showed skill. He was using different engines from what I saw- one for designing and another for programming, and I saw that definitely made him stand out.” The program was not a basic Scratch program; it was an actual coding program. Quintana added, “He wasn’t just using a built-in design like in Scratch, where you’re able to have your own character sheet. He actually did pixel art in his project in real time and then inserted those characters into his game to program them. That would take a long time to do, but he did it so quickly that it was incredibly fascinating.” He continued by talking about how he had never seen anybody with his level of talent at a hackathon before. He mentioned, “I’ve been to two other hackathons before this one, and I’ve hosted one of them. I’ve never had a hackathon where somebody did something as cool as this.” Bogert ended up winning the hackathon, but he did lose a couple of points because “he was taking characters from existing IPs, which wasn’t entirely original.”

While Quintana mentioned earlier that Bogert had talent in coding, he clearly does. For the past couple of years, Bogert has been working on a game called Starry Station. It is an indie game that takes place in space. He said, “I was inspired by video games such as Indigo Park, Poppy Playtime, and Five Nights at Freddy’s. Even though this isn’t a video game, NASA also inspired me with how it introduced space to me.” He mentioned that he started back in 2020. He was introduced to game development as well as being a Minecraft server developer, and he wanted to try something with more creative freedom. He continued, “Around 2021, I came up with about 15 game ideas across a lot of genres. One was called ‘Starry Station.’ Originally, it was a 2D horror game about exploring an abandoned station, but it focused more on finding parts to build a ship and travel to other planets. There were a couple of character ideas- most stayed, but some were cut, like ‘Alfred,’ a robo-dog that could fly and detect nearby monsters. That was the very early concept.”

Now, “our design process is much smoother, with different documents like character sheets that explain lore and dialogue. This helps writers, designers, and the whole team create a game that works together and feels more complete.” He also said, “I’ve been told off so many times for what I do, and I want to show that even a kid like me can create something high-quality that can be compared to bigger AAA titles like Poppy Playtime.”

Bogert is planning on releasing the game in the summer of 2026. He has put a lot of effort into this game, and it’s impressive to see a student here at NBTHS create such a great game.