Genre: 2D Platformer & Magic Puzzles.
Platform: PC
July 2016 to July 2018.
Made with Unity Engine and a team of 15 people.
Team: 8 Artists, 1 Programmer, 2 Technical Designers, 2 Musicians, 1 QA Tester.
Description
Our character is a young girl who sets off on a journey to save her grandmother, who has been kidnapped by an evil creature. She will try to unravel the mystery about them with her magic umbrella.
Aura has to travel through different places until she reaches the castle where all the corruption has started.
This project started as a project between friends, but we decide to professionalize the development by
We had to do a pitch in front of a jury, who would select the better projects to help them develop the game. Only 4 projects were chosen.
In the beginning, we had four meetings per week: Production, Design, Art and Programming.
We thought that, being in 3rd year, we knew everything about Game Design. We couldn’t be more wrong.
We had to relearn everything we had learn over the past years. I remember going to meetings with the teachers, that were simulations of meetings with leads of each department, and leaving the room feeling like I knew nothing. It was very different to work with GDDs with unlimited resources than doing it ourselves.
We have two years to finish the project, we invested the first one learning how to work as if we were in a studio. During the second one, we are producing all the content that includes the game.
Role in the project
Producer: Team Communication, Task Assignment and Coordinate Meetings with teachers, press and team members.
Game Designer: Design Concept, Mechanics, Camera, Story, Music, Enemies and Level Design.
Programmer: Script Events and Camera, using Cinemachine 2D.
Personal Achievements
As a Producer I had to keep track of all the tasks that I had appointed to each member. It is hard to keep a team of 15 students motivated to invest their free time working in a non profit project. Since they are giving the time that they want to work in Umbrella, it is complicated to get the most of everyone.
In addition, my knowledge as a Game Designer has grow heavily. I´ve been going to all the meetings that had been done during these years, in order to improve my skills of communication with all the departments. It is very important to understand how does every person thinks, this way I can give them what they need to do their tasks.
I remember taking my vacation days from EA, when I was working there in summer, to go to meetings of Game Design with the teachers, just to be told that we were doing it wrong. Moreover, at that time I was the only Game Designer in the team, so I had to go alone. Instead of demotivate myself, I tried harder to learn what I did wrong and how to do a solid Design. So I went to every meeting with more strength. After some time, they started telling us that we were doing a great job.
In this project, we don´t have engineers. All the code has been done by Game Designers, we wanted to prove ourselves we can be in charge of programming our ideas and mechanics. The programmer is a friend of my class and the technical designers are from third year of Game Design. Anyways, we have been helped by our teachers.