Geriantics was the game I worked on during my 1st year of University, during this time we wanted to decide on a simple but fun mechanic and found a solid solution. Players would lose if their age hit 100 and the key of the game was to constantly use pickups to speed up other players ageing whilst slowing down your own.

 

Our team consisted of 2 Artists, 2 Programmers, 2 designers and 2 Animators. I acted as the Scrum Master & Animator.

 

RESPONSIBILITIES

- Conduct daily stand up meetings

- Adhere to deadlines

- Maintain game vision and meetings

- Rig & Animate 2 Playable characters (Caveman & Robot)

 

Timeline & Evaluation

 

Our goal with Geriantics was to create a really fun to play couch multiplayer party game which you could play with your friends similarily to overcooked or gang beasts, this meant that our focus was on rounds being incredibly hectic and fast-paced and a streamlined experience that didn't confuse or hinder players.

 

What went well:

 

• With an incredibly simple idea in mind, we had very few problems with the programming requirements for the game, there was no feature creep either

• The team was quite engaged with the idea and it meant that we could get a lot of discussion on how to further improvement within the game

 

What went wrong:

 

• We had no dedicated tracking of progress, due to inexperience we hadn't known much about using Kanban as a strategy until the middle of development

• The audio was addressed rather late into production meaning that we had to rush a lot of detail when creating tracks

 

What I've learnt:

 

• It's essential to have a timeline of some form within a project, even if it's sticky notes on a board, because of that we lost countless hours of time without noticing the disadvantages it was giving us

• Using the role of a writer to an advantage rather than a crutch, during development we didn't consider how to utilise our writer at all and we should've held meetings to give more thought into how the game can intertwine with some form of narrative. 

• Every member of your team has the potential to do something great for your team, it isn't wise to ignore or remove tasks from certain individuals due to poor performance if you haven't had a critical talk with them yet, find out their reasons/situation and work together to create a solution! My team and I made this mistake during development and if anything, that was one of the biggest lessons I learned and is one of the many reasons I can lead my teams the way I do today