SHELL SHOCKED

DETAILS

OVERVIEW

Role(s)

Producer
Level Designer

Team size

Engine

Unreal Engine 5

Project length

8 weeks

Genre

Couch Co-op

Platform

Itch.io

Summary

In this project, I started as a level designer designing layouts and transitions before switching to being the producer and organising the team using SCRUM & Jira.

My work

Managed the team using SCRUM & Jira
Oversaw the game's scope
Designed level layouts & level transitions
Assisted the design process
Organised several playtests

GAME TRAILER

TIMELINE

DOCUMENTATION

Concept Pitch

While everyone was researching our reference game (Videoball), my documentation skills stood out and following this I was the go-to person for documentation. This meant that during the concepting phase, I was in charge of creating the pitch. To deliver the best possible pitch, I worked with every discipline, identifying the important information and making it easy to understand.

Shell Shocked Example Pitch Slide PR.png

Shell Shocked Example Pitch Slide VA.png

Example Slides from the Pitch Presentation

GDD & Feature Specs

Following the success of the pitch, I was once again tasked with maintaining the project's documentation, this time the GDD and the feature specs. For the GGD, this required working closely with everyone on the design team and collating their work into one central document. As the creator of the document, I was also responsible for keeping it up to date.

For the feature specs, as the level designer, I created the feature spec for the wave system which was designed to change the layout of the level. I also created the arena feature spec which defined how obstacles and power-ups worked.

PRODUCTION

Assisting with Production

At the start of the project I worked closely with the producer, creating the team contract, risk & bug logs and facilitating SCRUM rituals. Halfway through the project, we realised that the game was overscoped and something needed to change. The decision was to cut the wave system which meant cutting all my level design work. Since I could no longer work on the level design for the game, the producer requested that I became producer so that they could focus on audio design. I accepted and focussed on production work for the last 2 weeks of the project (the final sprint).

Shell Shocked Risk Log

Shell Shocked Bug Log

Becoming the Producer

My new responsibilities were to oversee the SCRUM rituals, maintain the Jira board and manage the game's scope. This was a very quick transition and I did not have a lot of time to get my bearings, although my assistance to the previous producer's work helped me get started as soon as possible. I was immediately in charge of rescoping the project and making sure that we had a feasible plan to finish and release the game on Itch.io.

Shell Shocked Sprint 2 Original Time Estimate.png

Sprint 2 Burndown Chart - Before I Became Producer

Sprint 3 Burndown Chart - After I Became Producer

LEVEL DESIGN

At the start of this project, I expected to be working as a technical designer, however we already had many technical designers and were missing a level designer. I volunteered to try out level design to challenge myself and help the team. Since this was my first time working on level design with a multi-disciplinary team, I created a level design pipeline to follow.

Level Design Pipeline Flowchart

LEVEL LAYOUTS

To keep the game fresh and replayable, we were interested in having multiple level layouts like in our reference game. After some research, I sketched several level layouts with different wall placements, each providing unique challenges for the players.

Level Layout Sketch Examples

TAKEAWAYS

The largest learning from this project was the reality of losing your work due to scope cuts. Due to the timing of the decision and when I started working on the level design, I did not get very far in the process, but it still hurt to lose all my progress. As the person in charge of proposing the rescope, I understood the necessity of the decision but I'd still like to avoid it in future.

My time working as the producer for this project was more enjoyable than I expected and I seem to pick up the responsibilities quite quickly. I still prefer designing games but I could see myself being a producer again someday.

Although I was unable to complete my level design work, I still learned a lot about the pipeline of a level designer working in a multi-disciplinary team. In upcoming projects, I may volunteer to be a level designer again, however the chances have lowered.

Even though I had strong documentation skills already, the exercise of creating and maintaining the documentation for a medium sized team was interesting and I was able to improve my information design skills.

Thomas Silverthorn | Technical Game Designer | Thomas@silverthorndesigns.com