It’s finally reached the end of the semester, and Comrade Quest’s development is over. It makes me sad that everyone on my team is going their separate ways, but I’m glad that I got the chance to lead a group of talented artists, programmers and designers to realize my vision. Also, I’m quite proud that one of the designers on my team will have her own game in Game Production Lab next semester.
Now that my directing days in GPL have come to a close, I’ve been reflecting on what I’ve learned in the past five months. Developing Comrade Quest has taught me a lot about game development and managing a team, but the most important thing I’ve learned can be summed up in a single statement: have confidence in your original vision. There’s a reason why most successful games don’t change their mechanics mid-development, and that’s because most creative directors have the utmost confidence in their vision.
The biggest upset in Comrade Quest’s development came when we tried replacing the melee combat system with a turn based one, similar to Paper Mario’s turn-by-turn combat. Part of reasoning behind the mechanics change was based off feedback that we got from the alpha test. Many of our testers complained that Olaf’s attacks didn’t feel like “attacks”. As they were, Olaf’s attacks felt mechanical and lacked the rewarding visceral sensation featured in published games.
By changing the fighting mechanics to turn based, we wouldn’t have to worry about achieving that visceral quality. However, while a turn-based approach would solve our current system’s problems, it would bring unanticipated problems of its own. How would turn order be calculated? How would current attacks translate into the new system? How would we make a turn-based system cooperative? We were not adequately prepared to answer these questions.
The decision to change the combat to a turn-based system was also influenced by my own worries. I was worried that we wouldn’t be able to improve the physics and animation of the character’s attacks in time for beta release. Instead of being confident in my original plan and in my team’s capabilities, I chose what seemed like an easy way out.
Thankfully we changed back to the melee system, but we lost a week-and-a-half worth of production time. This cost us Olaf’s combo attack. If I had stuck with my original plan, the time the animators spent animating buttons for the turn-based user interface could have been used to animate Olaf’s combo. If I had stuck with my original plan, the time the programmers spent programming queues could have been appropriated to improve attacks physics. This is why it is so important to have confidence in your vision. If I had remained confident in my original plan, we would have used that week-and-a-half of production time to create a better product.
The finished executable of Comrade Quest may not feature a combo, but overall I’m satisfied with how the game turned out. I’m glad that we were able to create an entire level and feature a boss fight at the end. I’m also very pleased with the audio and visual aesthetics of the game. Our sound designers really pulled out all the stops in creating great sound effects and an ambient track. Above all else though, I’m delighted that people find Comrade Quest fun. Almost everyone I’ve seen looks like they are enjoying their playthrough and interacting with their partner. I created Comrade Quest to foster this in-person interaction and camaraderie, and to see its players have such fun together confirms the game has achieved its original intent.
I would like to continue Comrade Quest’s productionin the future, but now that I no longer have a team, it will be difficult to do. I envision getting a team of talented individuals together to work on Comrade Quest and pitching the game to Kickstarter. I can also see going to one of the existing game companies and pitching the game directly to them. However, developing Comrade Quest further will have to wait for a while, as right now I have to build up my portfolio and find steady employment. To summarize, I haven’t given up on Comrade Quest, it will just have to float around in the “things I’d like to develop someday” pool for a while. So what will I do with this blog in the mean time? I have to build up my portfolio, so I’ll be posting concept art, UI designs, mini games made in Game Maker, and other game development portfolio pieces.
Thank you all my dear readers for following Comrade Quest’s development. It’s been a pleasure blogging about its production, and I hope you all continue to read about my future projects. It’s been a fun and eye-opening journey so far, and I can’t wait to see all the places my passion for game development will take me.
If you want to play Comrade Quest, go to this link to download it. Comrade Quest Download
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C.E. LEWOCZKO 