PRODUCER
UMBRALATE
Role: Producer
Duration: June 2021 - August 2021
A 4-month project for two clients from Sumo Digital. Our team was to create a 3D Puzzle Game which offered a unique alternative to a traditional mechanic within the puzzle genre.
GAMEPLAY TRAILER
Overview
In Umbralate, you control a vampire named Fang. Unfortunately for Fang, they lost track of time and stayed up too long gazing at the night sky. Now, they must get back home to their coffin, while hiding in the shadows to avoid being burned by the Sunlight.
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Luckily, Fang has you! By controlling the sun’s rotation you can manipulate the shadows in each level, creating a pathway for Fang to manoeuvre around and safely reach their coffin!
Gameplay
Umbralate has 10 levels and a tutorial, which demonstrats the key gameplay beats of a larger 2 hour product within a short vertical slice.
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Levels range from easy levels featuring the core Sun Manipulation gameplay, and eventually introducing new mechanics such as Pushable Blocks and Solar Powered Gates which compliment the core Sun Manipulation. This allowed our team to display Umbralate's potential if developed further within the short development period allotted to us.
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Playtesting & Iteration
A large aspect of Umbralate's success as a project was a result of the team's early rapid prototyping and subsequent internal and external playtesting.
The quick turnaround on testing allowed our team to asses what parts of the gameplay experience were enjoyable, and which needed further refinement, with the major finding being our control scheme which was overhauled through multiple iterations over 4 weeks.
As producer, I played a large part in reviewing the build's stability for external playtesters to create a stable bugfree experience for our testers to receive as accurate feedback as possible and carried out the creation of our feedback forms and took part in observational testing of our players.
Production Management
As the producer for the team, I organised and attended every team meeting throughout the project, leading the discussion and taking notes of points raised which allowed us to later reflect on ideas which may have been forgotten. Additionally, I attended discipline meetings and recorded notes which the key points were then relayed to the other disciplines.
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Task management was carried out over Trello. To assign tasks efficiently I regularly met with the other leads to assure tasks would be given to the most suitable member and ensure they were set realistic deadlines and were achievable.
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Furthermore, I presented our team's weekly status updates to our client's covering the progress made, what was currently being worked on as well as our future steps. This allowed me to further hone my presentation skills.
Use of Scrum
As weekly meetings with our clients were required, I used weekly sprints to ensure short weekly deadlines that we could then reflect upon as a team. This allowed us to assess what went well within the past week and what areas we should look to improve upon. Additionally, they gave the team a clear focus each week to aim towards.
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Stand-ups were carried out on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. This allowed members to regularly discuss what they were currently working on and raise any roadblocks occurring that others may offer solutions to. The transparency that this offered the team allowed members to consistently know what others were working on and gave everyone a clear vision of what the final end goal would be.
Lessons Learned
Working on Umbralate allowed me to gain excellent insight into the development of a project from conception to delivery. Responding to feedback from our clients within the industry allowed us to further improve the project and continuously achieve the high industry standards they expected of us each week.
This was also the first project where the majority of the team was on-site, and as such allowed me to gain valuable experience working alongside my peers. This allowed us to gain more insight into what everyone was currently working on, as well as letting us bounce ideas of each other more rapidly.
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Umbralate was a fantastic project to work on and my skills as a production manager were fully demonstrated, achieving an A+ for my efforts within the group. Additionally, I received praise from our clients for the professionalism which I showed over the duration of the project, as a result of consistently responding to our clients' feedback, ensuring members were on-track with their tasks and regularly reviewing the build for quality assurance.