Designer_Devlog_3

Our last sprint has taught me a lot about game design and the many intricacies within the role. There has been a lot to learn and I am making many changes to my design process as I go. We made great progress on our core features this sprint and even managed to get a solid playable build that was ready for me to start playtesting and making changes to the design of the game. With the opportunity for playtesting, I have been able to test my design and look for flaws or areas of improvement. As I recognize potential problems within the design, I have started the process of identifying multiple ways that the problem could be solved and then deciding which solution would be the most beneficial. Seeing as the game is in its early prototyping phase, now is the perfect time to identify those underlying problems and make the necessary alterations. An example of this from the sprint was with the planned method of escape for the crops. The original design idea was to have the crop players blend in among the crowd for a certain amount of time before they were able to escape. This made it so that the crops only real option was to survive. The early prototypes revealed to me that the crop players did not have enough agency. There was no real purpose for them to risk moving quickly and they had no real opportunities to evaluate risk versus reward. When playtesting, the times when players were having the most fun were in moments where they would be discovered and chased, or if they had risked themselves to make an attempt at escape. After making this realization, I knew I needed to give the crop players more agency. I brainstormed several potential solutions to this problem, ranging from giving them the option to craft, to allowing them to fight back if they worked together, but none of them allowed me to maintain the fact the crop players were meant to be using deception as their expression of skill. One of the core design pillars of the game is deception, and these options got in the way of that. The solution I found that stood out to me was creating a system of touchpoints that the crop players needed to activate before they could escape. This forced crop players into more uncomfortable positions that would require them to evaluate the risks and rewards of attempting to activate a touchpoint when the farmer was near. When applied within the game, the effects were immediately apparent. Players were making riskier decisions, and different playstyles started to become much more noticeable. This was a very exciting change for the design of the game. Allowing players to have different playstyles led to new and fun moments for playtesters, as some would focus on blending in and deceiving the farmer, while others were more focused on making rapid progress on the touchpoints to escape quickly. 

None of these changes and alterations to the design would work without an effective team doing great work and communicating. There have definitely been challenges that we have faced as a team, and roadblocks have interrupted our progress along the way, but this is the case with any development team. What I can say is that we have done a great job of learning from these mistakes, changing our process as a team, and communicating our problems and our wins with each other as they come. Each roadblock we encounter has been dealt with in a very professional manner and our progress has remained strong throughout.

Our 3D artists have been very effective with their communication and work ethic. Holding meetings with the teams has been an incredibly strong tool as a designer as it has allowed me to communicate my vision with each developer. When speaking with the 3D artists, it allowed us to establish a core art style for the game. This made the modeling and texturing process significantly smoother for everyone involved as it prevented unnecessary work from being completed and taking time out of the sprint. Our artists have done a fantastic job of keeping their work aligned. Without this, models from different artists could end up needing to be redone in order to match the games style. All of our models look like they belong together and follow the theme of the game. They match the design concepts and enhance the gameplay significantly.

Our programmers have been vital to the success of our initial prototypes. I am extremely thankful that we were able to establish our core loop early on into development. Beginning playtesting as soon as we did allowed me to make changes to the design that improved the player experience greatly. Our programmers have gotten their jobs done quickly and effectively and because of this, we have been able to start refining and optimizing our mechanics early on in development.

I have been trying my best as a designer to maintain a reasonable scope for this project. I have seen how quickly things can spiral and with a team like this it can be easy for a designer to keep asking for more. If I were to keep adding new features every sprint, we will never have a strong polish on the ones that really make the game enjoyable. I want to make sure that the features we have are the ones that elevate the game, and I am focusing on avoiding unnecessary features that will prohibit us from making true progress on things that really matter. 

Our next sprint will be incredibly valuable to the player experience. We will be adding our art and refining our first level to match the design of the game and increase the immersion for the player within the world of the crops. I am very excited to see where our development leads, and I am thankful for my team that has allowed us to make it this far!