Adapt to circumstances and grow as a team. Blog post 4

By: Anna Malkan Nelson / February 28, 2018 /
Program: Game Design
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Working in sprint 6 we are now close to Beta. All core movement, features and challenges area supposed to be implemented (at least close to finalized) and between Beta and the Final version of the game there will be time only for tuning and polishing the game.  

Our goal for this sprint is the final challenge, the boss fight if you wish. The sprint planning now works smooth for group Kraken. It works like this:

I show the user story for the sprint for the team:

AsWhale.png

Then I make a quick sketch of the scene on the whiteboard and we talk every part through, before we start formulating the tasks for the week.

This is a rough description of the final challenge and end scene of our game:

  • The whale appears from the right, fronting the player for the first time
  • The whale uses its three abilities:
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Lightning breath
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Call for allies
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Ram attack
  • The player does her very best not to die from the attacks from the small enemies and the whale.
  • The whale dies from a final epic shot with the harpoon

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  • The player feels like a champion. The end of the game!

The level design will be finalized this or next week.

Our group has so far encountered one obsticle that got us out of balance for a while. Somewhere in the middle of the project one of the two artists left for a three-week vacation. Since we did not know about this vacation at the start of the course, we planned the project sized properly for two artists. When that person left, it took us a while to rethink and change our design to match the new circumstances. I think some energy got wasted as well, before we decided to do the best of the situation and move on. Now we have adjusted to the situation as it is. I plan the user stories with this lack of artist in mind and the artist that is present is doing a great job, performing his very best every week, and all the art tasks from the sprint planning is done when the sprint is over.

Lesson learned – don´t get stuck when something unexpected changes the conditions. Adapt and you will grow as a team.

Note that the pictures are not screen shots, I have put together not finished concept art to show a mockup of the final challenge. The harpoon and both the small enemies are made by Isak Mansén; the ship, the beam, and the whale by Emelie Almroth, and the UI by Juste Eriksson. The lightning breath, the call for allies, the damage indicators on the whale and the ship, and the background are mockups.

About Anna Malkan Nelson

2017 Game Design
Tags: 2017