Tools: Unity
Team Size: 11
Created for: MI 498 Collaborative Game Design
Cirro
Role: Designer
Project Duration: 45/82/112 Days
Cirro is a 3D adventure exploration game in which the player utilizes the magic of wind to traverse floating islands and solve puzzles in order to restore a shattered world.
Designed a key section of the gameplay world.
Iterated on my designs after play tests and feedback from multiple parties.
Provided valuable feedback to other areas of the team.
Fixed issues that arose during testing related to gameplay content.
Responsible for level/puzzle design as well as refining our gameplay loop with the producer.
Communicated across teams, bridging the gap between people.
Decorated the world/environment with various foliage and interactable props as well as environmental storytelling.
Worked in blender to create / modify floating islands.
Contributions
Reflection
What Could’ve Been Better
I wish I had more time. Joining the team mid-project with other ongoing obligations; school, work, and my commitment to Spartasoft Studio meant this unfortunately competed with other priorities. While I strived to always make myself available when a team member needed my assistance or my opinion, there was a shortage of time. Notwithstanding, I think I succeeded in being accessible and a positive addition to the group.
In hindsight managing my role and expectations more efficiently at the onset would have been beneficial. Being enlisted to help with design while unable to access to the program attributed to the ambiguity. If I could go back I would aim to set up clear deliverables as well as defined hours. Not only would this have made my life easier but it would have significantly improved the experience of everyone else I was working with.
I can admit that one obstacle was my hesitancy to reach out to newly acquainted team members in the early hours outside of normal timeframes to work on the project. On one occasion this resulted in a merge conflict. While minor, I never want to create additional work for the team.
What I Learned
Making puzzles in an open world environment is quite complex. We had to balance conflicting feedback from play testers. Some found the puzzles too simple, while others were getting stuck. We then had to balance our play testers feedback with that of our stakeholders. These dilemmas provided me with experience in the nuances of game balance and solutions.
Designing for an open world environment I learned to never assume the player will know intuitively the correct path. The freedom of exploration can lead to emergent gameplay but, as a level designer it was my responsibility to guide the player towards their goals. In a world where the player can go anywhere this wasn’t always easy and required creative solutions.
On this project I gained experience in Blender and learned a great deal from our artists. This forum provided a platform for me to utilize Blender effectively to create floating islands and take them from start to finish resulting in a usable game asset in Unity. I also learned more about how to effectively use Unity’s terrain tool to create grass and pathways that gave life to our world.
What Went Well
Being recruited for this project reinforced that I possess a skillset that is desirable. The fact my fellow classmates felt that I would be an asset to the team and could assist on such a large scale project meant a lot to me. The recognition from my colleagues helped establish my place on the project.
I was able to successfully integrate myself into a team/project that was already in production and tailor my work to the needs of the team and our stakeholders at Rockstar Studios.
During the postmortem for class, team members echoed their appreciation of my contributions. They claimed bringing me on board to help with level design was one of the successes of the project. This reaffirmed that my design skills were valuable.
Part of my role was to facilitate productive dialogue between team members and establish successful methods of collaboration. I accomplished this by being a mediator who respected and incorporated the creative ideas of all team members.
The artists on this project were stellar. Their work allowed me to engage in environmental story telling and afforded me the room to create a unique world.