• What did you change from the initial plan?

In our initial plans we had more platforming interactions in mind. We were considering creating walls that could pull you in, or speed up pads, but we realized that these interactions were not central to the theme we were given and decided not to continue working on those interactions. We also realized early in development that story was not super important to get our point across, and we decided to move from a narrative driven experience to a more action oriented experience with story taking a backseat. Our initial plan also involved enemies using their own bodies to launch themselves, ricocheting off walls to make contact with the player. We quickly found these enemies were inefficient and enemies with projectiles would also be more on theme than our original enemy idea.

• What went right with your final project?

We’re all really happy with the final version of our game. The art, music, and game world came together really well, and the mechanics we all wanted to add were implemented to the best of our abilities in the timeframe. We created an immersive world for our game that came together really well. Our game expanded our Unity skills, and the results were something we were proud of.

• What went wrong with your final project?

One big issue we were having was commit and merge conflicts. A lot of us had mostly used github for code, and hadn’t really experienced it with 3D game files like Unity. The .scene files caused us some issues when we wanted to work on the levels independently, and on a few different occasions we had to go back and re-implement certain things that got overridden. Developing on a mac also had issues with ghost .ds_store files making the merge errors even worse. Another thing that could have gone better is the scopes we all set for the project at the beginning. Everyone in the group had somewhat different ideas and expectations for the project, and that led to some imbalance in the work. We’re definitely all super happy with the final project, but setting clearer goals from the start would have helped us a ton. 

• What would you do differently next time?

If we could start this project over I think we would work on communication and making sure that the scope of our game is something that was possible within the given time. We would also consider taking more time in the planning phase and really plan out the different parts of our game and implementations. We would ask how everyone’s workload was looking like this quarter and assign tasks based on how much time they would be able to put into development aside from their normal responsibilities. 

• If you could add one more week of development, what would you add?

If we could have had one more week of development on this title we would have taken that time to possibly create more levels to increase playtime, but mostly we would take that time to polish what we already have and make sure that the interactions between our systems were as smooth as possible. We would also go back to menus and credits and make them look more aesthetically pleasing. Finally, if we had extra time we would add more juicy interactions and add more particles to further polish the game.