This was my first sprint as the lead game designer for any project, it was a great time.
I wanted to make sure everyone was handling work that allowed for experimentation and discovery, as we still haven't found many fun mechanics or loops in our concept yet.
First I made sure to knock out lots of work for our paper prototype. I concepted the idea, bought the materials, and planned our date to test the game. We spent a few hours honing in this idea and completed the assignment early so we could focus on the digital build much more.
However, a mistake was made in our judgement as we didn't know that our paper prototype wouldn't be played in class. This meant we needed to post our paper prototype to a forum with materials that were all accessible from home. I'm not entirely sure if this is our fault. It is possible this was said in class, but it wasn't mentioned in the assignment online. Either way, I could've communicated better with the professors to make sure our game was ready to go. This meant I had to go back and rework our game so it could be played with paper, tape, and markers, instead of Lego blocks and cards.
Next I focused on building some core features for our game that would be important from the start. I build our goober character and gave them an active ragdoll so that instead of lifelessly laying on the ground, it stands and waits to be hit. With this I knocked out a good bit of points for us since this wasn't the simplest of things to set up. For now it looks like a man made of Jello, but its a good starting point for the various directions we could take our active ragdolls. For example, we have plans to add AI and a walking ability for our goobers.
After this I tended to lots of cards in-engine. I worked on some destruction mechanics with our artist and producer Jonathan, as well as fixed some bugs for him. Then I build a couple of explosive barrels whose power and threshold can be adjusted.
Finally I built us our feedback form for our paper prototype. We found lots of bugs and many fun things to start working towards, even without a complete level yet. This means my main goal for this sprint was met.
Overall this sprint went very well, however we do need to work on communication with all members. Some members fell behind this sprint and this isn't what we want to happen at the beginning of this project. For now we are fine to take the hit, but this can't happen again, and communicating and confronting teammates in the future is going to be a big part of keeping this team on task.
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