SEMESTRIAL PROJECT (SECOND YEAR SECOND SEMESTER)
( 17/01/2024 - 30/05/2024 )
WHAT was my role on "The Pit" ?
As the project's producer I was responsible for documenting the progress made each week, setting relevant deadlines, and convening and communicating with my colleagues to allow each of us to work at their best and reach our set goals comfortably. This meant creating comprehensive tools for listing and tracking assignments as well as rationalizing their interdependencies, such as a masterlist (with tasks properly categorized between different roles, completion goals and importance), a Trello board arranged around our weekly sprints and exhaustive documentation of all needed or intended visual effects, feedbacks and systems.
I also organized punctual weekly meetings and sprints, which allowed us to focus on work and not spend more time talking about the project than actually making it. This, in contrast to the meeting schedules of other projects, allowed us to keep lighter and more comfortable schedules while retaining maximum efficiency. However, it was only possible due to consistent efforts to keep all information easily available through exhaustive documentation.
As the project's game designer (doubling up as level designer) this was among my main concerns and responsibilities. From start to finish: to make all information easily accessible to my colleagues, I kept design documents up to date and created new ones when relevant.
Within the first few days of work on the project, I had set up a Game Concept Document with all necessary basic information. This document gave me and my colleagues a clear direction to follow in making the project.
However, knowing it would soon be a lackluster means of documentation: I created the structure for our Game Design Document right away, which allowed us to browse and add well ordered information effortlessly. This document was not only kept up to date to remove redundant or expired information, but also used daily by every member of the project as our public, shared brains. Any documentation or art created would first be catalogued there, before being discussed during the week's sprint meeting.
In my role as the project's concept artist, I searched for relevant references in the shape of structures, textures and visual atmospheres that would fit both our narrative context and gameplay. In foremost service of the gameplay, visuals were to be highly legible indicators of level design structure and player state.
This meant thinking about them through the rare scope of a constantly falling character that mostly looks down, and what that meant for obstructing the player's vision. Moving at high speeds, I also had to concern myself with visual effects that would communicate their speed levels both in positive and negative ways. As such, the player's sensation of flow could quickly devolve into one of loss of control.
What is "The Pit"?
You're a janitor working down a bottomless hole, scrubbing oil stains and polishing rusty metal.
One day, your 5 minute cigarette break is rudely interrupted... by a star? falling STRAIGHT DOWN THE PIT?!
You suddenly find yourself hurriedly jumping and sliding down, from derelict metal structures to darkened concrete extrusions: with no possible escape nor any end in sight.
The Pit is a first person falling game, where you will need to make clever use of the different level structures to make your way down as fast as possible without breaking your legs, or the rest of you.
