The End

Week Thirty-seven

(or The End Is Nigh) 

The AIM< website is now updated with the game, process book, and game design document. Enjoy!

I spent this week thinking about what I would post to wrap up my thoughts and reflect what I learned during AIM<’s development. While compiling the materials for the AIM< process book, I wrote a post-mortem with input from the rest of Violent Traversal.

After reading through the post-mortem again, I’ve decided that it nicely sums up the development process and leaves nothing out that I could concisely elaborate. So, this will be my last post for my AIM< dev blog. Thank you very much for taking the time to read the posts. I hope that my trials, errors, and successes can encourage you in any of your creative endeavors.

If you’re interested in any of my future dev blogs or projects, check out my homepage and blog page. I will be working on new projects soon. Until next time, enjoy the post-mortem!

“AIM< is the culmination of two semesters worth of teamwork amongst individuals with a passion for learning game design and development. The development cycle reflects the many trials, errors, and successes experienced while learning new skills and disciplines. Our goal was to develop a fun game that was markedly different from a majority of readily available games.

From the beginning, the playful and abstract concept of “cannon shooting cannons” took a great deal of time to explore. The initial concept met our goal of being different from other games but also brought the challenge of trying to find enough common ground with games we had experienced to know where to begin.

We saw the gameplay as being comprised of three genres; puzzle, platform, shooter, and some exploration. While these genres have been combined in other games, our goal was to reject some conventions by featuring shooting as the primary means of moving and interacting with the environment.

A copious of time passed before a mission statement was finalized. This contributed to the development and persistence of a gameplay identity crisis throughout a majority of the design process. The identity crisis caused many difficulties, including setting task goals and establishing scope. Scope grew out of control. When we realized the issue, we were forced to start cutting features and content to have a cohesive project by the deadline. Our struggle to manage scope was compounded by a lack of experience with anticipating the amount of time required to augment existing skills or learn new ones.

Level design proved to be a particularly important skill that no one on the team had much experience with. We started this process very late in development and discovered a pipeline was needed for producing levels. Developing such a pipeline was a process that should have been addressed much earlier due to the amount of time required. Had level design been started sooner, the game’s identity crisis may not have persisted as long since we would have discovered which proposed mechanics worked through the level design process.

In spite of difficulty with scope, we found that establishing consistent modes of communication early on helped us through many of the challenges we faced. Our team established strong internal communication from the onset, which promoted a healthy teamwork environment. Communication and teamwork continued to be strong throughout AIM<’s development cycle, eroding only slightly towards the end due to external pressure from other coursework.

Another portion of the development  that we consider successful is the realization of AIM<’s characters. By offering two unique characters, we offered players different gameplay experiences. The Mech and Drone were designed to reflect gameplay differences through their size difference, changes in mobility, varying levels of durability, and differing functionality.

As the development cycle for AIM< comes to a close, we believe that we have overcome the challenges we faced and gained valuable experience designing a complete game. We look forward to sharing AIM< with an audience of family, friends, and our fellow students.”

Thanks for reading!