The Umibozu project have now been finished after 10 weeks of development. These weeks have both been fun and interesting as well as frustrating, but they have also provided a lot of experience.
The end result of the project ended up being a discovery/adventure style game which concept was based upon the myth of the Umibozu from Japanese culture. The gameplay itself takes place in a labyrinth style setting where the player controls a ship with the objective to gather clues about what happened to the villagers that went missing from his village. When all clues have been gathered a path opens which allow the player to continue into the final area of the game where a cutscene will be played.
There were certain aspects of the finished product that worked better than others and some that would have required re-designing if the necessary time would have been available at the end of the project.
Positive aspects
One of the most positive aspects of the end product was the main menu of the game. This menu contained a slideshow of images used as a medium to communicate the story of the game to the players. The menu was designed in such a way that the player would have the ability to rewatch previous images, fastforward the slide as well as skip it all together. This choice was made to allow players to understand the setting of the game as well as the motivation behind the objective of the game if they so desired.
Negative aspects
A compass was used as an indicator as to where the player were supposed to go in the game. The compass acted as a guide to points of interest which were made up of three clues and the final area. While the compass worked as it was intended to do, it was not designed to be used in the more maze like level we settled with for the final version of the game. A more open level was used during the time of the designing and programming of the compass took place. This sometimes caused players to get confused when the compass would point them in directions where they were not able to go.
The implementation of the compass had more issues as well. It was common for players to not pay any attention to the compass at all because they didn’t know what it was used for. This is clearly a effect of us developers not being able to communicate the role of the compass in a clear enough manner.
New experience
A lot of new personal experience was gained during this project that will be useful in the future. I had little previous experience of practical game development as a process, as well as no experience with the Unity engine at all when this project first started. As the project went on I started to learn more and more about the engine itself as well as the process of making a game, but the most important thing I learned was work ethics. As the only programmer in my team, I always tried to log as many working hours as possible each day just to make sure that the development always progressed. While this strategy was good for the development progress, it was also bad for me personally. Long working days, at one point 16 hours/ day, and not properly resting during weekends really had a negative effect on my attitude towards the project to the point where I almost got burned out.
Conclusion
The end result of the game ended up with both positives and negatives. While there are a number of things that I would have liked to fix if enough time would have been left, there are also aspects of the game that I ended up being content with. This project have served as a great learning experience first and foremost, and that is incredibly valuable in itself. Knowing more about the process of the development phase of a game is something important for future projects. The most important newly gained experience that I will bring with me from this project is work ethics and discipline. While it initially feels rewarding to keep a high pace with long working days it is not a viable strategy in the long run.
Sometimes it’s much better to work smart than to work hard.
/Jesper H. Backman
TriglavCoding 