This project began with a game jam, which helped us form teams around unique ideas rather than peer groups. It also encouraged us to produce a rapid demo build (seen below) to get early feedback on the core concept, which was an informative experience. 

Along with leading sprint meetings and facilitating cross-discipline communication, I continued to improve my coding skills by implementing features, fixing bugs and addressing playtester feedback. Crafting an openly explorable environment also allowed me to apply my level design skills, usually finding creative ways to guide or block the player. Though with an encroaching deadline, I admit we may have relied too much on glowing arrows and invisible walls. 

Having a slightly larger team meant we could be more ambitious with our plans, and I could delegate tasks more during production. I feel we did a good job managing scope throughout, though we could've added more polish to the trench section given more time. 

The photo mode was an idea we'd had from the beginning of production but only implemented towards the end, leaving it very bare-bones. Given the opportunity, I'd add more polish to this mode with a recursive gameplay loop that randomly selects objectives to photo and in-game rewards for completing objectives such as more oxygen or trophies for the base. 

Our main goals moving into pre-production were revising the player movement and controls, as well as adding more horror elements. To address these, I designed the movement tutorial and transitionary cutscene. 

To enable clear communication and smooth progress on the project, I also created documents for team reference. These were designed to be quick and easy for any member to understand and use, which ensured we stayed on target throughout production. 

Level design was a fairly continuous process as we were constantly adjusting things to improve player navigation up to the deadline. We began with a pretty open layout, encouraging the player to explore in any direction. But as we honed the narrative, we arranged the environment fit, opening more linearly and gradually. This ensured players wouldn't get too overwhelmed and allowed us more control when testing the player experience, as well as fitting the project's scope. 

Below are some snippets of code I worked on to add polish to the game: a system for displaying subtitles with given audio clips and a system for automatically switching control icons with current inputs. My process for coding a new system typically involves commenting the steps I envision, figuring out how to get the variables I need, searching for the name of some obscure function, testing for bugs and exploits, brainstorming fixes with a programmer, implementing them and testing again.