Astro Assemble: Journey Beginning

Project Type: Group Project (6 people)

Technology Stack: Unreal Engine (blueprints)

Role: Programmer, Team Manager

GitHub: TSE_Project

Itch.io: Astro Assemble


Demo

Description

This project tested both my development and management skills. For the whole academic year, I led a group of 6 people and managed all the workflow. The team has utilized agile strategy development and later switched to the iterative style. The target was to develop the semi-open-world puzzle game demo (vertical slice), inspired by “The Witness”, “Portal 2”, and “The Talos Principle”.

The first few months team has spent developing the interim report, coming up with ideas and performing market research. Later, the team spent another 2 months on game design document creation, where the game plot and mechanics were discussed and finalized. After that, the development phase started.

As a team leader, I coordinated different aspects of game creation, such as design and programming. The main objective was to convey the team to see the final game view in the same direction. As the programmer with the most experience in the game development side, I was also responsible for setting up all the workflow (using git), creating documentation standards and discussing the possible approaches to solve the problem. Additionally, I was responsible for helping people work on the project and taking on more advanced tasks on my behalf.

By the end of the project, many people did not perform well, because of a lack of knowledge and willingness to learn Unreal Engine and bad time management. Despite that fact, the vertical slice was created with unique sprites and puzzles in place. Additionally, the team released the game on itch.io, where we got both positive and negative feedback (internally & externally) from users. It makes us understand the project might have the potential for later development, even if it requires a lot of improvement.