Those That Roam in The Shadows
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​During my second year of university, I participated in a year-long module where we had to pitch and develop a video game in a team of three.
In our game, you play as a dead father protecting his sleeping son from ghosts. To do so, you type incantations that exorcise the evil spirits before they can reach your child.
Throughout the project, I took part in the following tasks:
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Developing an prototype for an original idea to effectively communicate it to my team before we pitched it to the class.
Using the Scrum framework to create fortnight-long sprints, with each indicating what we wanted completed in those two weeks.
Participating in alpha and beta tests, including writing questionnaires for players to complete after testing the game.
Reflecting on Those That Roam in the Shadows, I realise that working on a video game for a year-long module helped me grow in multiple ways. Some ways it helped me were:​
Understanding how useful it can be to complete tasks early but effectively in case unforeseen problems delay the team.
Receiving constructive critism from lecturers and students helped me with identifying the source of their critique and how iterating on the game could rectify such issues.
Writing notes for every meeting and lesson helped me discover what method of note-taking I find most effective, which I utilised in my third year.
A Video of my Level for Those That Roam in the Shadows
In the level, enemies (the ghosts) must travel through three rooms before they get to your child in the centre. The level is symmetrical, with three rooms in the top left and three in the bottom right so that the player has the same amount of time to deal with enemies no matter where they spawn.
The "Survive" round, after the level, I designed with the intention of making the player feel claustrophobic. The lack of windows or a mini-map in the isolated room denies the player feelings of hope of an escape, and the fact the player has to dart around while typing evokes panic.