Acies Animi
Links
About The Project
My Roles
Game info
Acis Animi is strategy game where you take conroll of either the Angels or Devils fighting between for good and/or evil in ones head. You seize control of parts of their brain, fight the humans inner ego and libido, and sieze control of their mind before before the other faction do.
Engine
Genre
Strategy
Team Size
8
Unreal 5
Angel
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Devil
Libido
Project info
This was our last large school project, we worked on it for four weeks. We only had designers and programmers. Luckely most of the designers had different graphical skills (concept art, Pixel art, vfx, etc etc), so we made most of what we had.
The central pillar for the project was that we wanted to make a game that "The game should be easy to play, but strategically in depth!"
I had two roles during the production, both as a the system designer and as product owner / producer
System Designer
Product Owner / Producer
Worked with systems of the main mechanics, including diagraming and sheets, playtesting and discussing with the team what workes for the game
Worked with a more produceral role, trying to keep the Vison of the project, and working to keep track on different deadlines we have set up
System Design
As the system designer of the team, I would be the one responicble of creating the rules of the games, design the abilities of the units, and playtest everything either through paper prototype or in game.
The design process of the game went through three stages:
Design Meeting
Which We as a group would discus how what we wanted the game to be about, how the game would play out, and a basic ideas how the systems would work.
Iteration and Playtesting
Which I would make write up the rules and test them. I would also communicate with programmers during the process so they could start implemtation.
Implementation
Sketch from first design meeting
Which i would be in communication of the team for making the mechanics, and then implemitation the stats to the different units.
With the game I would design three different aspects of the game, the rules, the units of the different factions.
Designing the Rules
As the ideas of the rules where, so my job is ironing them out, testing them and communicate the changes to the different departments. I would write the rules using Miro and create aboard in the rules, and then test them out.
First iteration of rules, which on the board i would try out the mechanics
All the different iterations of the rule that I tried out.
Final iteration of the rules
Designing the Units
When designing the units I tried to keep a unified theme of the units. I got alot of inspiration from other team members, which sharing ideas from different strategy games, with prime example being starcraft.
For the angels I tried focusing on supporting eachother either healing or buffing eachother, and for the devils I focused on being as destructive and poisnus as posible. The neutral faction where designed to be a hard unit to defeat in the beginning, however when the player upgrade their unit they can take care of them. .
I first wrote up the stats using google sheets, then tried them out in paper prototypes then and then wrighting them up in miro for the rest of the team.
Notes from my google sheet, with iterations of the units stats
Notes from miro, with the neutral factions ability and how they move
Diagram showing how the abilites are designed which i showed to different members
Product Owner/Producer Role
This is the third time as product owner and having a producer role in an futuregames project, and this was the hardest projects to produce, as we had alot of different difficulties with the project.
However I took alot from my previous projects which worked well, most importantly i worked very closley with the scrum master in making tasks based on lists I made before our meetings. I would lead Sprint planning and had constant communication with the team what needs to be done and when.
What went against us was simple:
1) Stress making a Portfolio
2) Sickness spreading through the team
3) Dificulties with Perforce which lead to we had to switch to Github
4) Me being on thje verge of burn-out
5) Me working full time as system designer on a heavely system design game together with being PO.
So alot of organisation and morale building was not made, for example we did not do any Mandatory Fun, which is critical to keep a good feeling in the group. The result lead to we had to cut units, and could not polish everything before release.
However we had the luck of having a good team who liked to work together, and we we could easily discuse and navigate through the problems.
Link to the prevous project
Calender i made with all important dates we planed out
List I made for what needs to bedone. Each list made week per week, and then implemented into Jira.
Problem: Distrust amongst team members
During the project one of the team member used one of artits/designers art in an AI program. This broke the trust between the two members and quite hevealy unmotivated the aritst/designer to work on the project. I believe that the team member that used AI did not do it to hurt, and that he never used AI ever again, however that trust was broken.
Solution: ...... an impossible problem to regain trust
The best solutions would have been talking before the project about AI, and using another team members art in it. Therfore all team members know what to do and not to do.