As a producer, I was responsible to manage the concept team during the R&D and Prototype phase, acting as a SCRUM master for that specific feature team, allocating tasks and facilitating the artists’ work toward the efficient production of concept art for the project. When we entered production a lot of my peers from the Gamer Camp Biz course ventured off toward to other industry positions and I took over the roles of Head Producer, Head Designer, and Product Owner. I had similar responsibilities: I was managing the entire team rather than a portion of it and I held presentations for stakeholders each milestone and sprint review.  I was also responsible for coordinating the outsourcing of audio and V/O assets, briefing and keeping in the loop a small group of BCU conservatoire students who created custom assets for the demo. Moreover, I planned and managed QA for the project, organizing both internal and external testing sessions to assure a crash free build.

 

On the design side of the project, I was involved in the Narrative Design during the R&D and Prototype phase, when I helped to design the world the game would be set in. The Dark Souls series was the main source of inspiration for the type of exploration and storytelling we wanted to achieve. The main goal was to design a narrative and backstory that could be expanded on multiple release platform because the ECHOES IP was also planned to be used by the Undergrad Two Years Fast-track course to create an extension of the same IP: a Steam 2D platformer demo and a single screen unfair platformer for mobile.

 

The production phase my attention shifted to combat and level design: It was the first time I handled this level of complexity and it sure was a challenge to make this experience as fluid and coherent as possible using elements, assets, and tools we could access from the Prototype phase. Boss fight and the enemy AI were the most problematic areas for different reasons. Starting from trying to design a Director system for the game, I quickly realized I was tackling a far bigger task than expected. After de-scoping to an individual AI rather than a “pack” AI, we took inspiration from Implosion: Never Lose Hope and changed some elements to make the combat more dynamic, retaining the simplicity. Faster enemies and different types were, in the end, the right choice for this type of combat.

 

I also worked on the Boss Fight design that the demo features and the most challenging side was to keep in mind the available resources. Usually, a boss fight features various routines, but also a clear distinction of phases linked to the amount of remaining Boss HP of other environmental or contextual conditions. Time constraints and limitations forced us to approach it differently and the solution was to use a distance-based series of routines rather than phases. It turned out to work well, considering the issues we encountered down the line, even though I believe more time could have allowed for more iteration and eventually a more elegant way to implement this part of the game.