Design Postmortem- Trapped

The end is here…

We did it, the game has been shipped and I could not be more relieved and happy with how it turned out. I got what I wanted and more. Everyone who is on my team should be proud of what we produced. All the work that was put into the game is what made our game great. I want to quickly shout out some MVPs for this semester that out in the extra mile. Thanks to Dylan, our awesome programmer that spent way more time working on this game than I could ever ask for. Thanks to Trevor for being a stellar help to the level design team, his organization and leadership skills showed on our team. Thanks to Shawn for pumping out so many amazing, high-quality assets at record speeds. And thanks to Vanessa for doing such a great job capturing my vision in the character models that came out perfect for our style.

In this postmortem, I want to quickly review our process and what went right, what went wrong, and what I learned from the designer role perspective. I enjoyed this whole experience even with the personal issues I ran into this semester. I think I was overall successful with sticking to my vision and creating an awesome and addictive game. It was so rewarding watching this vision become a working product that people can enjoy. So without further adieu…

What Went Right…

Starting off with a successful idea

When I was starting to create the idea for this game it was originally a joke that I would crack in our 377 class (mobile game development) constantly. “What if we made Pacman…. But ON A CUBE”. I kept teasing that I would eventually build it on my own time. When 495 came around I decided to pitch and took my idea and evolved it into something different. I am personally a huge fan of the game Risk of Rain 2 an action combat roguelike. It’s a very successful game that I have put many hours into. So decide to use that as my jumping-off point for my game idea, going for a +1 style development cycle. A lot of our systems are designed off of the addictive gameplay loop systems of Risk of Rain 2. I wanted and try and capture similar “player feelings” and responses in our game. By doing this gave us a strong starting point for the development process.

Playing to the strengths of my team

Figuring out what members of my team liked to work on was extremely crucial to me. Having people work on cards that they had an interest in led to a higher quality of work by that specific team member. For example, Vanessa is a very adept character modeler so trying to keep her working on that aspect of our game was important to me. It also helped with keeping all our styles on track and consistent throughout the semester. I never had to worry about having to match up the styles of two different modelers which could be difficult. I also tried to apply the same ideas to my other teams. For the level designers, I wanted them each to design their own levels one, two, and three. I did this because it helped add a different personal style and idea to each level that is in the game. For example, Parkers levels do a great job of using the wall turret enemy to effectively force the player to have to dodge through narrowly. Trevor’s levels always had a flow to them that the player could follow along with for max efficiency.

What went Wrong…

Uhhh what now?

Scoping my game was probably my biggest fault as a game designer this semester. I was way too terrified of scoping features that would not make it into our game. This was a huge mistake because halfway through the semester I had a lot of team members almost out of a job. I had to relook at our scope and add new features into the game that I did not originally think we would have time for. Luckily I did have some ideas but having to go back and add cards to our backlog every so often was not a very good feeling. For the next project I work on I want to make sure to not hold back on my vision at all and present all the features at the start.   

Deadlines, Deadlines, Deadlines…

When we were starting with our project I think I was too lenient on deadlines. We were getting a lot of work at the last minute and I spent many sleepless nights fixing bugs right before build day. When you get in a lot of elements pushed to the game in a short period it has quite the potential to create game-breaking bugs that could make the game unplayable. I should have spent more time checking in with team members to update me on their progress so I could encourage them to update Trello as well. Cutting and adding stuff to the build the day before led to me feeling extremely overwhelmed and stressed. If I lead another project I will do a better job of enforcing deadlines and keeping strong communication with all my group members.

What I Learned…

I’m the captain now…

Being in charge of a team of ten people was an extremely humbling experience. My leadership skills grew immensely throughout the semester. I learned how to create a positive working environment that everyone could enjoy and feel comfortable in. I learned how important it is to take responsibility for everything that is happening in our build process. Pushing blame never solves problems. I tried to help out with every extreme bug. I also did my best to provide guidance and support to all my team members as much as possible. By the end of the semester, I felt like I had a much firmer grasp of what it means to be a successful game designer.

Building my Vison...

At the beginning of the semester, I feel like I struggled with giving my team members a clear view of what I wanted. I did not realize how hard it would be to describe the pictures and ideas I had in my head to others. Finding references was way more difficult than I thought it would be. Ir was something I did not think I would have to spend so much time doing. As the semester went on I got better and better at providing resources and feedback to my team so we could stick to my vision better. Overall I think by the end I had a very good system down although in the future I would like to spend a bit more time creating my own art to show off what I want. I learned how important it is to specifically describe things to get the result I wanted.

Thankful For a Great Experience…

At the beginning of this semester, I did not plan to take on this position. I made a quick last-minute decision and a quick pitch video and here we are now. I can’t believe how far I have come this semester. I am so proud of all the work that was put into this game. It’s such a great feeling to be able to bring a team together to produce something great. It has inspired me to look into creating my own indie studio making my own ideas into games. It has always been a dream of mine, but working on this project has made it seem more obtainable. I want to once again thank my team for all their hard work and support on this project, I could not have done this without them.