Belly of the Beast

Overview

A first person adventure game featuring plenty of exploration, power-up based progression, and bullet-hell like elements.

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Project Type: Team

Platform: PC

Timeframe: August 2017-December 2017

Position: Producer/Designer

Tools Used: Unreal

Team:

-Natalie Frost: Designer/Programmer

-Timothy Chartier: Technical Artist/Programmer

-Jodie Garner: Artist

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Background

Belly of the Beast was my Senior Capstone game first semester of Senior Year. While we faced many trials and tribulations, and ended up not moving forwards to Senior Production, working on this title was a fanatastic experience.

Trial by Fire

     Our team had a pretty bad hand from the start. We had two designers and two artists; no programmer or producer. Additionally, we were all introverts with poor communication skills.

     We had a few lucky breaks in that one of our designers could also do programming, and one of our artists was a tech artist who could help. Also, our programmer-designer already had a prototype they had developed over summer break to practice Unreal that we were able to use as a basis for our game.

     In the end, however, poor communication and simply not getting things done in a timely manner rendered us unable to move our game forwards into Senior Production. We almost got there though; one or two more weeks and I think we could have had a pretty good chance of moving forwards. And we really learned a lot from the experience.

What we Learned

     I learned quite a lot from our journey, short as it was. I was the acting producer for our team, which forced me outside of my comfort zone, taking charge and maintaining communication with the various members of the team.

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     I also got to use Unreal, and engine I had a passing knowledge of, but got to dive deep into thanks to this project.

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     I even got to experiment with sound design, making the music for the game.

     Most importantly, however, I learned how to fail gracefully. While we didn't make it across the finish line, the journey itself was well worth it.

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     You can read more about the journey in my dev blog: https://ianccotner.wixsite.com/portfolio/blog