Week 3-4: More Character Designs, More Concept Art

Summary

In the third and fourth weeks of production, the team focused on further developing the player mechanics of the game and fleshing out the world and overarching narrative that the game takes place in. The snowman mechanic, for which we received critiques over its confusing nature, was transformed from a group of follower NPCs to a consumable resource that the player can upgrade. This was also prototyped proving its feasibility, while the other team members worked on creating the antagonists of the game world and fleshed out the other aspects of the GDD.

Individual Contribution

During the refinement process in the third week, my role was aiding in the refinement of how the snowman mechanic would work. For example, in the debates for how the snowman mechanics would work, it was my idea to let the player switch the snowman abilities in the middle of active gameplay (while fighting enemies) rather than forcing them to only be able to switch in between battles. Aside from aiding my teammates in the refinement of the story and the mechanics, my main role as the visual designer was creating the character designs and concept art for the GDD. This was mainly necessary for the antagonists of the story, which were not developed in the initial proposal. Thus, a large portion of my contribution to the GDD was dedicated to designing three bosses and completing three fully rendered drawings for each of the chapters of the game.

Reflection

While there were not many problems in the third week, there were some breakdowns in communication and confusion in the fourth regarding deadlines and some expectations of the work that needed to be done. This led to the submission of the initial GDD being a lot later than the rest of the team and I would’ve liked it to be. I take responsibility for this as I took much longer than anticipated to complete the concept art and new character designs than anticipated, thus placing setbacks in the completion of the document. This also led to a lack of meetings during our usual timeslot in the fourth week, which was needed to clarify roles in the completion of the GDD and communicate ideas. In the next weeks, the team will work with due diligence in ensuring that meetings are scheduled to ensure team unity and to avoid the breaks in communication that happened before the GDD submission.

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