Postmortem
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Across the past weeks, our group has worked on the game Umibozu, which has required a lot of work. In order to make the best game possible, we have had to conduct playtests and gather information from the testers on what they thought of the game, to subsequently alter certain design elements to better contribute to our goals. Additionally, we have been working with Scrum during the development process. Scrum is an agile work framework that focuses on iterations, continual improvement and increased productivity with the specific goal of helping us reach our Alpha, Beta and Release deadlines. In relation to Scrum, we have certainly learned a lot, both good and bad. For instance, MVP (Minimum Viable Product) is crucial, it allows for a project to continually be in a ‘releasable’ state at the end of each sprint. This has been somewhat difficult for us to do. Sometimes we found that the game’s mechanics were not correctly balanced which often resulted in a game which didn’t support our aesthetic goals nor met our MVP requirements. Daily meetings on the other hand, have been great. We were always aware of how far the project had come and what was still needed for a given sprint. I also think that using Scrum has helped our group in being motivated and working together for the same reasons. The playtests forced us to rethink several design decisions of our game, but also stressed the importance of Scrum and having a MVP. While the MVP was not always a success for us, the playtesting-sessions revealed what design decisions needed to be changed which resulted in mechanics that increasingly supported our aesthetic goals for a releasable product. The team has worked hard and has communicated well with one another, but sometimes difficulties can arise, like merging projects, dealing with illness in the group etc. However, we have gained a lot of experience during the development of this game and I’m confident that we will be able to do even better for the next project. As a programmer I have also learned a lot about Unity and programming in general. Being two programmers in the same team demands attention to code standards, refactoring and that you always try to communicate with one another to avoid problems related to this. Our game has turned out fine, we are satisfied with what we have accomplished, however, we think we could have done even better and with everything we have learned, we know this is possible. Bring on the next project!
-Jeppe Willatzen  |
