Blog 6: Postmortem – Beelonging

So, the development of the game Beelonging is now over, and it’s time to evaluate and reflect on the results. It’s been 9 intense weeks with a lot of hard work, long days at school and work during weekends, but I think the end result is also really good.

The end result
Beelonging is a 2D side scroller game with an infinitive scrolling, parallax background. The final version has five different character types; the bees, the wasps, the flies, the dragonflies and the spiders. They all have different features which add dynamic to the game. The end result also includes a lot of visual feedback, for instance when hitting a fly, and sound effects that add feedback to the player. The overall game feel is good and the movement of the player bee is steady and smooth. Our main focus when creating Beelonging was to evoke the feeling/aesthetic of belonging and being connected to something bigger. I believe we manage to evoke this feeling quite well. In the final version of our game, you control one bee, but when you collect enough honey fragments you also have the ability to control the whole swarm and shoot honey collectively at the enemies. The more bees you are, the more powerful you become, and if you try to keep as many bees alive as possible, you will be more powerful when shooting at enemies.

The game has a start screen, losing screen and a winning screen and runs very well when playing. However, what we lack in the end result of the game is a rising action and a climax in the game to tell the player that they are getting closer to the goal. The game communicates this through a rising roar from the bear when the player gets closer, but may not be noticeable or understandable by the player.

Overall, all team members seem happy with the end results of the game. The result is quite similar to what we were picturing at the beginning of the development. Of course, there are a few things we could have added to the game, and the game could also have been more polished. But due to time constraints and more important things to prioritize, it wasn’t possible. For example, we didn’t include the bear boss in our game, and that’s something we cut out from the game quite early in the development, and I think it was a good decision. The team also had to deal with a lot of sicknesses for a couple of weeks, which led to less work being done. Despite that, we made it through and had a working and fun game in the last playtesting session.

My learning outcome
I have learned a lot during this project. It wasn’t only my first time creating a computer game, but also the first time being a lead artist of a project. I’ve never had a leader roll before and sometimes I think it’s hard to be a leader and decide over things. I always want everyone to be happy that I don’t always trust my own capability. So that’s something I have to work on, be more confident and don’t be afraid to lead and make decisions.

I’ve also experienced what it is like to work with another artist, where you have to match the art style and divide tasks between each other, which honestly I think is hard. The communication between us has sometimes been good, but sometimes it has been not so good. Some of the things I will take with me to future projects when it comes to producing art is to have a clear art style guide for the team, with a lot of reference images and color schemes, and communicate a lot! It’s also good to actually sit together and work, so you can help each other.

What went well
– We manage to evoke the aesthetic of belonging in the game
– We never had any bigger issues in the team
– The art in the game feels consistent and the game runs smoothly

What went not so well
– Not as equal work share for the graphics as hoped
– Lack of naming convention, sometimes asset names were confusing
– Sometimes the communication between the artists and the rest of the team could have been better

I think we chose a really good and fun concept that fitted the team very well and the whole team liked working on it. In my opinion, I think we actually manage to create a game that had the aesthetics of belonging, which was our goal. We also received good feedback and critique from the playtesters and they seemed to like the game too.

Ingame HUD I made for a graphics assignment, however this is not the one we used in the actual game.

Throughout the development we’ve had quite good communication within the team, we have supported each other and we have worked as a team. Working with scrum was something new to us all and it took a little while to get a flow and find the right scrum tools. But now at the end of the project, we have created a quite good workflow and we are ready to move on to the next project.

If you want to know more about the game and/or play it, you can do it here.

Bai bai!
/ Petra, artist of team Lycanthrope

About Petra Aderlund

2017 Graphics

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