Blog post #6 Postmortem
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Now ten weeks have gone by and at last, the game is completed. What kind of game was created in the end? The umibozu that we made became a semi-open world where there is less focus on the player shooting rather it is the enemies obstructing your way and shooting at you throughout the level. The goal of the game is to reach four individual landmarks that give clues to what is attacking you and how to appease it in order to escape. You have to navigate through the sea with a faulty compass. Fortunately, there is a magic object that when interacted with will temporarily make the compass point towards the right direction. So what have we learned from making the game? First of all open world are hard to design. We wanted to have the semi-open world aspect, that you could explore and get lost at sea to increase the mystery of the game which is the aesthetic goal. Then how did the players react to this world? Most were confused on where they were traveling as there was little to no way to orient yourself as the environment as the camera rotates with you making it hard to recognize the environment as you always see it from different angles. While it is good that we managed to create a feeling of being “lost” in the player it was a bit too much. This showed us the importance of how you design the camera and that it is necessary to playtest what you see on the screen properly. What does the player see and experience? The magic objects fixing the compass exist as a crumble trail throughout the level however one thing that players gave in the feedback was a no way to tell how far you had progressed and what was left of the game.
(“Spider-rock” one recognizable landmark in the level) During development, it was interesting to see the MDA come to life and see how each asset contributed or changed the experience in the game. In Umibozu it is a very minimalist style however in-game while traveling and figuring out the objectives I was surprised at the anticipation I felt myself while playtesting. I still remember the first time I met the enemies in a build towards the final. Though I knew how the enemies looked, when I would meet them and designed the attack sound myself I actually jumped at the first encounter. In subsequent playthroughs, I was not as easily spooked but that moment became a memory. I was quite surprised that it happened but then I really felt good about the game that it managed to scare me. Teamwork One major thing that we all learned in the group is that since we are just four people there are both positives and negatives to the situation. The specialists will have no trouble with conflicting material since they make it all themselves but then since they are alone there is little support to help them in the group. At times development went smoothly as everyone worked hard and did their work good. With the little conflict in the material, there was less time correcting faults in the iteration before continuing towards the next. However, if the specialist got sick or had been unable to do their work it had a greater consequence on the development since nobody could pick up the slack because of lack of shared skills amongst us four. So during these ten weeks, we learned well and truly the importance of our roles and our responsibilities. Being in a small group showed as how well proper communication can take you a long way in development. The speed in which everything was developed was different depending on how well communication was conducted. I remember fondly the weeks where we got together at the end and worked in a shared space. It was easy to playtest, give feedback and see how people were working. During those time many design decisions and changes were made since it was easy to communicate with each other on all aspects of the game. In contrast, there was a week where nobody wanted to leave their homes because of snowstorms. Instead, all communication was done online through chats or videos. In that week no major change or feature was developed at the end of the week. progression had been made but we were a bit behind on the schedule at the end of the beta. Overall it has been a tremendous learning experience going through and finishing this project. It was a lot of work with a lot of stress at times but we managed to reach our goal, we made a game. We all learned more about teamwork and the development process which will only help us in future projects. I think this project is not any one of us are going to forget End note: all images are taken from an older beta build for this post and a few art assets have since been replaced.  |
