The Astro Parcel Service, or TAPS for short, is a Crazy Taxi-like space game wherein you deliver packages as fast as you can while avoiding obstacles. It was developed within a 12-month pipeline by a team of 16 student game developers and officially launched on Steam (PC and Mac) on April 17, 2020.
TAPS was my Masters degree thesis capstone. As the Producer and Creative Director on the game, my primary goals were:
Build project and people management skills to create and deliver a product within a strict timeframe.
Ideate, create, and publish a game, learning all of the challenges of doing so along the way.
Learn through failure and success not only how to be a producer but how to support creative individuals to reach their potential without overworking them.
My primary responsibilities included driving the game's narrative and gameplay vision, scheduling weekly workloads, tracking team members' velocities, coordinating when to ramp up or down a team (like Concept or Audio), creating marketing materials and campaigns, setting milestone and deliverable expectations, motivating team members, and somehow publishing a game while completing a Masters degree.
After publishing the game, I also wrote a reflection of the game's production and the lessons I learned as a producer. I have titled it "Helping Creatives Be Creative - Approaches to Producing" and you can check it out below.