Elemental Engagements

A spin on the classic RTS formula that utilizes two-player versus split-screen, god powers, and elemental-counters.

Role(s): Producer, Design, Sound

Team Size: 7

Production Time: ~16 weeks

Engine: Unity

Platform: PC, Steam

Contributions

Creation, prioritization, assignment, and tracking of weekly-sprint tasks.
Ensured above-and-beyond, on-time delivery of milestones.
Coordinated and led team meetings, facilitated healthy debate to achieve high quality results.
Created overall game concept and integrated feedback throughout development and playtesting
Designed maps using team-created and Unity-integrated tools
Workshopped most of the game's design decisions, took notes on playtests, and loads of balancing!
Produced several musical tracks and many in-game sounds
Produced videos/trailers

Going above and beyond

Creating Elemental Engagements was a crazy and rewarding experience filled with lessons that I was able to take and improve my future work with. At the beginning of the project, I knew I was surrounded by driven peers who (like myself) wanted to go above and beyond the simple task of creating a traditional video game and do something that is challenging. In this case, that meant subjecting ourselves to creating a split screen versus RTS game in 16 weeks or less!

The beginning of development for Elemental Engagements was slow and fast at the same time, I was deliberate and careful in taking responsibility for setting up our task tracking systems, communication channels and expectations, and overall project direction. At the same time, I had rockstar teammates that were setting up the needed systems (Liam Healey, Devin Fink) for our game that would be extremely valuable in the future. I worked very closely with team members in art direction, programming and our capabilities in the time we had, and managing the entire soundscape with another team member.

I was active in every discipline, ensuring best-possible quality standards throughout and delegating where needed as my knowledge in certain areas was surpassed by other teammates. I organized weekly board-room meetings where I would plan out as much as possible, including challenges that needed attention, direction in certain aspects of the project, and previous and upcoming tasks and goals. These meetings would often consist of fun and challenging debate between team members about how we can achieve the best results with our game's systems and overarching design goals. From fun sketches on white boards of possible ideas, to serious workshops, to watching a funny video, we did it all.

I also managed a couple of challenges related to team member contributions and helped to redirect their effort to more satisfying work and they ultimately were able to produce better results in doing so. This, on top of allowing my team members to correct and teach me about their own disciplines as well, which improved my processes throughout the project. When the project started, there was many meetings and learning moments for everyone, but as we continued, I was able to step back more and more and allow each team member to take charge of their role and define what is it we needed in the game (and I took that as a good sign of my own contributions to the team in this manner).

Every milestone we were meant to meet, we crushed beyond expectations and were able to achieve a Steam-published and well-reviewed game that is hard to create, hard to balance, and hard to playtest! I'm very proud of my team members and myself for the journey we went on to create this game, and am equally as lucky to have been able to take away several lessons for my own professional development and how I can improve!