Hello everyone! My name is Emil, and I am the leader of this semester’s newly started game development project in Hackerspace! Our team is made up almost entirely of newcomers, myself included, which means we have to figure a lot of things out on our own. It also means that we will be free to experiment and try new things! The main goal of this project is to have fun and learn game development, but we are also aiming to make something that we can show off.
I will walk you through how my initial plans compare to what has been done this semester and the project’s current status.
Initial plan VS What has been done
Initial plan
Before the semester started I made a plan for this project. It was supposed to span 2 semesters and end with a delivery to Norwegian Game Awards in March (ambitions, I know). The plan consisted of the following elements:
- Startup (spend time learning unity, get familiar with game development)
- Submission to Norwegian Game Awards (NGA)
See image for time distribution:
What has been done
As of now (19th of November) the initial plan has been followed quite accurately, at least in terms of content. During the startup period each group member spent time learning unity, working individually on their own project, but still being together as a group, available to inspire each other and ask questions.
A Game jam was hosted on the 3rd through the 5th of October with a total of 9 submissions! Four of the submissions had at least one member from this project group working on them.
After the game jam, meetings were spent brainstorming and coming up with a concept for the game. Some of the ideas we came up with were:
- A roguelike game about expanding a safe, lit-up area by exploring the darkness and gathering resources without being caught by threats from the darkness.
- A game centered on the human body, where players solve minigames related to biological functions, like the role of cells and the immune system.
- Something about Norwegian folklore
- A game about exploring a foreign planet using artifacts. The artifacts can be anything, and often doing something powerful, with a funny side effect.
The team held a vote to decide the project, and the final option won unanimously. The next couple of weeks were spent developing this idea further and creating a Game Design Document. You can read more about the concept below.
At this point we are in the middle of October, and we felt ready to start creating the project. To avoid 10 people stepping on each other’s toes while trying to set up a basic project with systems that other parts of the game depend on, we decided to split the group into two. Each team would develop their own demo of the game. When we were done, we would continue with the one we liked the most and transfer elements we liked from the other demo. The advantages of this approach would be that everyone would have something to do while the project was being set up, and we would get different perspectives on how those base systems would be implemented. In practice, however, I feel time we set off to this was too short to be effective (2-3 weeks). The group also suffered from some absence at this time.
In my initial plan I expected that we would have time to work throughout November, but the exam period starting the 19th of November and Hackslutt being set to the 15th, paired with meeting times conflicting with other events and group members having more schoolwork during this period meant we all had significantly less time to make the game than I originally anticipated. The end of the semester crept up on us!
Game Concept
Working title: Oops We Landed
Vibe: Coop-Adventure, Sci-Fi, Goofy
Inspirational games: Lethal company, PEAK, Outer wilds, Journey.
Number of players: 1-4 (Online multiplayer)
Description: You and your friends crash-land with your spaceship on a foreign planet. You have to fix your ship and escape the planet, but in order to do that you have to explore the environment to find ship scraps. On your travels you might find artifacts – powerful items with strange side effects. These items can help you traverse the terrain and overcome hostilities and other obstacles – or cause havoc between you and your teammates. You have limited inventory so prioritize what you bring along.
As you explore deeper, you gradually uncover the remnants of an ancient civilization. Through its ruins, technology, and forgotten stories, piece by piece you reveal what happened on this mysterious planet.
Project status
The team has created a Game Design Document that describes the initial idea, vibes and priorities for the project. We have also created a Github repository hosting the Unity project and defined the features we think are the most important for the game.
On top of that, the team has defined these essential tasks, and started exploring how to implement them:
Challenges
Progress has felt slow, especially after starting developing the game. This is likely because a significant part of the beginning of the semester was spent getting familiar with Unity, so by the time we are ready for creating the game the semester was already well underway. I also think it is completely normal for things to be slow in the beginning, especially for a student project with a steep learning curve.
I initially thought the Game Design Document should be extremely detailed, so that development would simply be to follow it step-by-step. In reality, I feel like there is a difficult tradeoff between planning and developing. Our planning strategy has in many ways been “throw stuff at a wall and see what sticks”. It would be unrealistic to have 10 people with limited experience and knowledge agreeing on every little detail. Some aspects have to be left for interpretation and exploration during development. I assume that even professional game and software development teams struggle with the same thing.
Time and effort are also a challenge. Game development is difficult and limited meeting time makes it hard to get into a real “flow” state. To make meaningful progress, it helps if everyone can contribute a bit between meetings. I really appreciate that our team culture is relaxed and flexible, but I also think that having a few shared expectations can be healthy. It helps us make steady progress, keeps motivation high, and ultimately makes the project more fun for everyone. Once the basic systems are in place I think it will be much more fun to playtest and iterate on the game design.
Moving forward
Moving forward we will continue the development of the tasks we defined earlier. These tasks are huge and vague. I think we should spend some time next semester dividing these tasks further into bite-sized portions. That way it becomes easier to know what each task entails; it will be easier to pick it up and get started. I think it also would be a good idea to utilize discord more for discussion. It is self-referencing, which means the conversations will always be available for anyone on the team to review, and it will also save time otherwise spent discussing things in meetings.
Based on the chosen project’s scope, I don’t think it is realistic to expect a finished game for NGA next year, but we will still aim for a Minimum Viable Product delivery to show the concept. Alternatively, if the group does not feel ready for NGA at that point it will still be possible to aim for a release at the end of the semester, or even the next NGA.
Regardless of the pace or final deadline, we’ve built a solid foundation and gained valuable experience this semester. With clearer tasks and better collaboration, I believe our team can create something exciting together next year.