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Necro Blade is a Game Jam project created during the annual institute event hosted by The Game Assembly.
Me alongside 8 other developers gather onsite to produce a product under 50 hours from the set theme "Combinations"
During the Jams end, our product received the honor or Best Game Graphics out of all the submitted games for the Game Jam.
Sense its completion, it has been self published and released on Steam and can now be played for free worldwide.
Sense its completion, it has been self published and released on Steam and can now be played for free worldwide.
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Project Coordinator - Setting up a planning and work ground, and communicating with the team to ensure a finished project for deadline.
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Game Designer - Structuring up a Game Design Documnet, with all the mechanical and gameplay related content, to ensure a clear vision with a fun gameloop
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Level Design - Blockout of Level and Iterating to ensure vision and gameplay engagement for the game product
Play the Game here
Project Coordination
As the Project Coordinator, my job was to make sure we got a structured and effective development. With the teams and projects best interest in mind, I started building a Miro board where we all could work together in an agile work environment online. The developers logged their time, tasks and progressions on the board.
The Pre-Prod Framework I put up went as followed:
1. Brainstorming - As soon as the theme was announced, we divided into teams, and brainstormed ideas in a 2 minute time frame.This went on in 3 rounds to come up with as many ideas as possible.
2. Voting for the best idea - As soon as we had all crampt out every idea possible from the theme, the whole team voted for the idea that was the most Unique outcome and the best scopabe with the time we had
3. Setting up the production plan - When the idea was decided, we used the template and set deadlines for where we wanted to be in the development phase for each hour (Alpha, Beta, ect). When everyone had their tasks and plan structured out, we divided into our specific disciplines and began working.
Game Design
When the Pre-prod has done, I started to document the whole Design idea into a quick Game Design Document in Miro. I wrote down the initial Idea and structured it with all the elements and balanced it for a cohesive experience.
The game loop went as followed
1. Roam the cemetery and kill as many monsters as you can
2. Upgrade you arsenal to aid your killing spree
3. Collect hidden magic spells between round phases to cast
The player had progression as their was a continuous difficulty curve each round. Each filled with more enemies, each getting higher damage count and higher health pool. To surprise the player even more, each 5th round a main enemy "Death" will spawn and attack the player.
Level Design
When I had the GDD with all the game rules, mechanics, and design content put down, I started to draw a Level Layout that would enhance this experience.
Sense we had a main feature that was a time frame to return to the nest before sunset, I designed the level so that this would be the core of the entire game play.
I designed so that the better bunnies was further away from the lair., so that the player would between rounds explore the closer Area, and explore further to find the bunnies with more score, while also building their mental map.
After the Top - Down was set of my idea, I went in to the engine and started blocking out. Between iterations, I always played and felt the sense of scale.
My prototype of the level was fast sense we was on a time frame, setting a deadline for when I needed to be done, so that the art team could start Set -Dressing the space. When we had a level mapped out we all play tested the product.
Post Mortem
Insights: A strong structure is essential for development, but as with any project, tight deadlines can introduce frustration and stress. What helped us the most was maintaining open communication when team members felt overwhelmed, and working in an agile manner to support one another when needed.
Conclusions: Having a well-structured start and a clear template to follow enabled the team to meet each deadline efficiently. The success of the game marked my second self-published Steam release, and the positive feedback and praise it received online only fueled my passion further.
This project will always be a significant milestone in my journey, as it allowed me to sharpen my skills in rapid prototyping, iteration, communication, and game production.
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