Making the
Impossible Possible

On April 2, 2026, a 16-year-old named Kanyeyachukwu Tagbo-Okeke rode his bicycle into Lagos and finished a journey that had carried him across seven Nigerian states. Thousands of miles away, in a room with a laptop and a copy of Godot, I spent two months creating the game based on Kanye’s goal, making sure the rest of us could ride it too.

The game is free. Press W, A, S, D. Watch your stamina. Get to Lagos. To play it, go to shermaneasleyrobb.itch.io/kanyes-africa-course-cycle.

I’m seeking employment in game design, game development, or animation. To reach me, write to caddvoc@uhcl.edu and the Clinic will connect us.

Part One: My Origin and my Life’s Purpose

I was born in Corpus Christi, Texas, on March 14, 1998, and I lived there for the first twenty-four and a half years of my life. I was diagnosed with autism at twenty months old at Texas Children’s Hospital, with the help of Sandy Mader and Waynette Jarrell, my speech therapist and occupational therapist at Pediatric Therapy Associates in Corpus Christi. When my mom, Cynthia Robb, found out about my diagnosis, she did a lot of research about autism.

Childhood was hard, the way it can be hard for autistic kids. I grew up in a rough lifestyle and a really bad neighborhood. I was three years old when my mom and I lost our housing by some awful people, and we lived at other places like the beach and the rest area during those stressful times, though my mom made the beach experience as a vacation enjoyable for me, as well as turning that tragedy into a fun adventure during that rough time, before she found us a place to stay and a steady job.

I was an outcast growing up, feeling like everyone hated me for no reason. I was even disrespected, mistreated, devalued, ignored, excluded, bullied; with the latter often enough that triggers my meltdowns, as well as getting discouraged by people who saw me as expendable, didn’t want to listen to me, and want me to give up on my dream without defending myself. What I found in that gap was my imagination, my way of coping, an escape from reality.

I’m really creative when I think about certain situations and ideas based on my experience. I like to imagine myself in a fantasy world where I can play freely. I even like to imagine my favorite characters interacting with the real world, and even talking to me, so I don’t feel alone.

Through all of it, my mom protected me from meltdowns and discouragement while being my biggest supporter throughout my life. She has a handful of words she has been telling me for years:

• “Positive thoughts get positive results.”
• “You can do or be anything you want; it just depends on how bad you want it.”
• “Don’t get discouraged, because when one door closes, another one opens.”
• “You can’t look forward if you keep looking back.”

The latest quote she told me is for me to keep moving forward because I can’t look back that can deprive myself from making new memories that I can cherish and try something new that I might like.

She also told me about Sylvester Stallone: his life before he became a movie star, his determination to play the lead in Rocky, and his son, who is autistic. Stallone’s experience resonates with me, with my own life and with my mom’s.

Then came the Nintendo. Late 2003 or early 2004, kindergarten, five or six years old, I got the NES. I know exactly what it meant: it gave me a special interest, a dream, and my life’s purpose. I wanted to be a game designer by making games.

I was a Mario and Pokemon kid, and I collected Nintendo consoles and handhelds for years afterward:

• Nintendo 64 before summer 2006
• Nintendo GameCube on Christmas 2007
• Nintendo DS in late 2009
• Nintendo Wii on Christmas 2011
• Nintendo 3DS on my 15th birthday in early 2013
• Nintendo Wii U in late 2014
• Nintendo Switch in late 2018

Long before I wrote a line of code, I was prototyping on paper: routes for racing games, side quests built around a specific skill, puzzle levels for adventure games. I even made custom stages in Super Smash Bros, starting with Brawl onward, and custom levels in Super Mario Maker to construct a layout of the playspace, an area where the game’s characters can explore around, with a goal in mind for both the players and the game characters the players are controlling. I drew fanart and wrote fanfiction, including a fan-comic, as a way of taking stories apart to see how they worked: plot, characters of what each one wants and struggles to overcome, how their world holds together. That was a designer’s education, and I gave them to myself.

Part Two: My Educational Path and a Degree that Fit my Interest

The path from there was a long road. At Calallen Middle and High School, I took four art classes, a game programming class, and a digital interactive media class, along with other required classes.

From seventh through twelfth grade I competed in Special Olympics Bowling and Track/Field, which we practice every Friday before regional event, where we compete against other students from different schools in South Texas for medals, especially gold which I won a few times. Thanks to the Special Olympics, bowling became my favorite sport, which fun fact I went to Austin, Texas for Special Olympics State Bowling in February 2012.

I was interested in anime, and I joined the Anime Club in my junior year as we meet once a week after school, where we learn and watch some popular anime once every three weeks, as well as gaming once every three weeks. In my senior year, I held an Anime Club officer position with the best title I’ve ever had: Gaming Warlord. The job was bringing the game consoles and games every three weeks. I did the job.

I graduated from Calallen High School with the Class of 2016 on May 28, 2016.

After I graduated from Calallen High School, I went to Del Mar College, and I earned an Associate of Arts in Digital Media on December 17, 2021. I also added two gaming classes and a stack of art courses that pushed me deeper into both 2D and 3D design.

One of the first projects I did in Del Mar College was the assignment for Design 1, which from what I can honestly remember turning a photo into a 2D artwork. I drew an artwork from a picture of Sarah Behmanesh, one of my older half-sisters on my mom’s side.

Another project I did in Del Mar College was from Design 2 class. We transform any material things, like discarded trash, into something else with a creative but new meaning to specific materials. For example, I did one of the assignments where I turned a small clear bag into a Doritos bag with the thin-paper materials I painted as chips, and a sandwich with cotton and thin-paper materials.

The third and last project I did in Del Mar College, from what I remember, was from a Printmaking class when I had to do a printmaking assignment dedicated to my dog, who I got as a puppy in May 2014 when he was a month old and unfortunately passed away late 2024.

Five months before attending the University of Houston-Clear Lake in Fall 2022, I looked at the course list for Bachelor of Arts in Serious Games and Simulations, and most of the courses resonated. I want to develop games that can not only make me passionate, but I also want to make games for other people to see my expression, experience, and voice through my game (plus game developing skills) as part of a takeaway when playing my game.

I graduated from UHCL with Cum Laude on May 10, 2025. During my time there, my favorite courses ran from:

• Foundation of Games 1 and 2
• 3D Computer Modeling and 3D Animation
• Motion Graphics
• Gaming Interaction
• Human Factors
• Cognitive Psychology
• Life Drawing
• Arts and the Child

Look at that list for a second. It’s a combination of a game designer, an animator, and a student of how people think and learn, all in one degree plan.

The software tools I use today are Blender, Inkscape, Medibang, and Godot. My reason is simple: they’re open source and free, every one of them. I plan to add two more open-source tools, Krita and DaVinci Resolve, as part of my animation and gaming career.

Here are a few of the projects I made along the way during my time in UHCL.

For my 3D modeling assignment, I had to make a temple. I decided to create a wolf temple, so it wouldn’t only be a sacred location, but to dedicate the wolves on a small island, since they’re one of my favorite animals.

For my 3D animation, I had to make a very short animation with a poem that connects to it. I wrote three haikus based on the animation I built through 3D modeling, with the motion graphics for the fire.

For my motion graphics, I was tasked with making a car ad with a few seconds of motion graphics. I created a raccoon car, and added some raccoon features to it.

The project I’m proudest of came out of my Motion Graphics class: a twenty-second typography animation set to a song I chose. I built it around my own life and my own struggles, with characters and props I made to carry the tone. My professor, Anne Henry, loved it. So did my classmates.

The project may not be a game-development part, but animation and art are important for video games, because video games must have visuals for gamers to interact with the game world and characters.

Part Three: Game Plan: One Developer, One Game, Two Months

I joined Helping Hands in Spring 2026. My mom suggested Quality Assurance Game Tester, a real role with real rigor, but really fun: not only do the QA Game Testers play the game, they have to make sure the game stays fun across every difficulty/level with variety of game characters, make suggestions if applicable, and detail everything in the document like bugs and glitches to prevent crashes and game-breaking cases for programmers, artists, and/or writers to fix before getting the game’s new patch version to play, and then the process repeats until the game is polished and complete. Then Kanye entered the picture, and a Zoom call brought together Kanye, his mother and brother, my counselor from CADD, my mom, and me.

I came to that call with questions. What is Kanye’s goal? What else does he like? I was gathering requirements, and out of that conversation came the idea of using gamification. Gamification, in my words, means turning anything and any word into a game, through game mechanics, game modes, and achievement systems that can benefit learning context like education and job responsibilities based on a game designer’s experience and motivation, while serving two goals at once: Kanye’s, and the player’s.

From February to April 2, I built the game by myself based on Kanye’s goal for the Spark a Spectrum event, incorporating a pipeline for games/animation/video, where that pipeline has three phases the way a studio had.

Pre-Production was the Zoom call and every answer I got from questions for Kanye and his mom: the game concept, the idea, the learning objective, the target audience, the route.

Production was Godot for the code and Medibang for the art. I drew Kanye on his bike, the Jollof rice, the blue shirt, the roadblocks, and the layout of the route, some of it frame by frame as sprite sheets. I playtested repeatedly, cleaning up the bugs and improving the game as I went.

Post-Production was the title screen, the rules screen for hazards and power-ups, the end credits, and the sequencing of all of it around the gameplay. I exported the build, zipped it, sent it to the team at Helping Hands, and confirmed it ran properly on their hardware, since I live several hours from Clear Lake. Then I wrote a questionnaire, so players could tell me what worked and what to improve if a studio ever picks it up.

The game itself is an old-school graphic top-down time attack. You move Kanye with WASD while a timer runs, fast-paced by design.

Stamina is the heart of it and very important, because in this game it represents in-game health, and it increases the suspense, challenge, and risk-and-reward tactics for players to flow into later states when achieving Kanye’s goal. Therefore, Kanye’s in-game stamina decreases to fit not only the human condition physically, but the limit of what a human can do, to ensure a realistic connection between the game world and the real world.

Hazards like roadblocks cost stamina and speed, so you have to avoid them at all cost. Powerups like a blue shirt give you speed and burn stamina faster if you press the “P” on your keyboard. Grabbing a blue shirt on the road holds you still for a few seconds and gives health back. Healing Items like Jollof rice give you both speed and health, because of course it does. You ride through Enugu, Anambra, Delta, Edo, Ondo, Ogun, and Lagos, the same seven states, in the same order, that Kanye actually rode in real life. Reach Lagos with stamina left and the timer stops and sets a record. Run out, and you start over.

My mom played it. My aunt on my mom’s side played it. They liked it, and that made me happy and motivated. What I hope anyone takes from it is simple.

My game represents a theme: People who are autistic, like me, can do anything and showcase creative expression to others, such as passion, skills, and experience, to make the impossible possible.

Kanye’s record-breaking painting is titled Impossibility Is a Myth. Neither of us knew what the other would say. We arrived at the same sentence from opposite sides of the Atlantic.

Part Four: What the Clinic Built

Ask me what the Vocational Clinic at CADD UHCL gave me, and I’ll answer like someone who has been paying close attention:

• Answering questions on mock interviews while asking questions that are appropriate and important.
• Working independently on daily tasks and assignments.
• Practicing mock jobs both alone and with a team.
• Advocating for myself to solve a problem.

My favorite part of that community is knowing there’s an organization that focuses on what students with autism need to prepare for university life and the real world, along with a small group and the one-on-one sessions to share my ideas and experience.

Part Five: What I’m Looking For Based on my Experience and Skills

I know my strengths, and I’ll list them the way a good technical hire does and how I polish the game:

• Prototyping ideas and assets, for example characters, items, and User Interface/Heads Up Display like timer and scores
• Pipeline production phases
• Note-taking for reference and inspiration
• Hands-on skill in art software to produce the like of 2D Sprites and frame-by-frame animation
• Attention to visual detail across programming, gameplay, drawing, video/animation, and design
• Basic programming for basic math, game mechanics, and User Interface/Heads-Up Display with movement/collision that correlates with player input
• Quality Assurance to frequently playtest, problem-solve, analyze, evaluate, and document errors on unpublished games

I do my best work quiet and independent with good time management and self-motivation, where my creativity has room, and I do well with clear step-by-step instructions, so I know exactly what a task asks of me.

I’m also autistic. New people and unfamiliar situations are a struggle for me, so it takes me time to be comfortable around them without getting sensitive. Trust and respect go both ways, and I build them carefully by sharing my interests and skills with others, talking about my struggles so people understand where I come from, and being included in gatherings and events. Sometimes I may not have the best eye contact and the words arrive slowly for me to say. For example, “what I want to say from my mind but don’t know how to express through my voice” type of tick or stim. Give me a minute for that, and I can find the right words to say without conflicts or meltdowns.

I’ve been looking for work in games and animation since December 2025, and the search has been discouraging:

• Job listings that I got immediately rejected after applying, before I even get an interview or showcase my skills
• Scams
• Being asked for skills listed with proof that requires a lot of money, which neither my mom nor I have for another degree, an internship, or a move to another city, state or country

My work history so far is volunteer work: a thrift store in Corpus Christi over a winter break in December 2024 to January 2025, and the game I made for Kanye. I really want to work in a gaming or animation job, not only to have a stable job, but to work at what I’ve loved for so long.

Since 2022 I’ve been building a dream project, my own video game, with plans to open my own studio one day, and in the meantime I want to work in a game or animation studio. I take it seriously, and I’m clear about what I’m looking for: I want to find the right people to show my game, who can handle and treat it with dignity and respect if it picks up.

That seems like a fair thing to ask.

Sherman’s game about Kanye’s ride was released free on April 2, 2026, World Autism Awareness Day, as part of Spark a Spectrum. Published by ABA World with the University of Houston-Clear Lake Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities, Vocational Clinic.

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