Prehistoric Pack is a senior Capstone Project from Champlain College and I was the Product Owner for it's two semester development period. As the Product Owner I held a lot of responsibility for this game and contributed to many aspects of its design and production. 

My most significant contributions are:

• Overall direction and vision for the game

• Pack Editions system, allowing player to affect their pack possibilities

• Mark design, allowing player targeted buffs and effects

• Dinosaur Pathfinding Algorithm

• Developer Level Creation tool and Automated Spreadsheet Importing

Prehistoric Pack was an amazing experience and learning opportunity. I worked under real Studio conditions, gained invaluable design experience, handled responsibility for tough choices and bonded with an amazing group of people.

One example of this was the Greed Edition which originally would give the player free money based on the rarity of dinos that came out of the pack. This was tricky to balance because players either had to make money from it on average to be worth purchasing our it would be a generally meaningless piece of the economy. In its updated form it's now the Discount Edition. This pack always costs 30% less than the standard pack making it more economically efficient by default. However, the player is informed that the pack contains 2 common cards and 2 entirely random cards. This distribution gives the player an interesting consideration: the pack is cheaper, but two of it's four results are guaranteed to be not that good, but the other two cards could be amazing and worth the price. Depending on the strategy the player is using this card pack can be really valuable or not worth, and that's exactly what it need to be a valuable piece of the games economy and strategy.

Dinosaur Pathfinding Algorithm

The pathfinding of the dinosaurs is a key factor to the player experience of the game. By the end of our first semester of work we new that we couldn't let the dinos simply walk towards each other and then attack. It was boring, both visually and strategically, and as a core part of the game loop it couldn't stay that way.

Making dinosaur combat interesting came down to two key points:

• Dinos need a reason not to walk in straight lines

• Not every dinos job should be combat

With the addition of two systems these points would be fulfilled: Walls & Objectives. 

The game did have a system that would block dino movement but it was opaque and confusing to both devs and players. Walls were the vastly improved version of the old system. Physicals was made it intuitively clear where dinos could or could not go and it allowed us to have far more interesting levels than the flat featureless planes that previously existed

Objectives were an entirely new system, although built on improvements of previously pitched systems. Objectives are specific tiles of the map that a dino can attack to gain benefits of some kind. Both player and enemy dinos interact with this system and it provides a variety of strategical benefits. No longer do all of your dinos need to be good at combat, some can provide support effects or focus on gaining objective related benefits. And not only that but now the player has a reason to strategize with the positions of their dinos. They may want to reach a specific objective first or move their strongest dino to protect another. Objectives allowed for much more detailed and complex combat behavior

Development and Product Ownership

The first semester team (we started with 8 people) very quickly coalesced around a few key themes. Our character artist John Renaud was a big fan of dinosaurs and we were interested in making a game for that niche. We had many collectible card game players who loved cool interactions and opening packs. To combine our themes we chose the format of an Autobattler; an Autobattler would show off our dinosaur models well and allow for a unique game loop with a card pack economy which is not very present in the genre. 

With our game's basis formed we quickly began designing and prototyping to find our footing:

At the end of the first semester of development is a process called Greenlight. All senior teams show off the games they've been developing and roughly half are greenlit to continue development for the next semester. For the developer's whose gamed don't continue they are acquired and merged into the passing teams. We had to make a strong showing here to let the game live up to it's true potential. 

We Passed through Greenlight! Our game had excellent visuals thanks to our artists and a robust core loop with room for additional complexity thanks to our designer. After this point we would acquire a number of new team members and have one month of Christmas break during which we were not allowed to directly work on the game. Our team went from 8 to 16 people for the second semester. We acquired some very niche talents like a tech-artist and a UI artist to further the visual polish of our game.

Not being able to work on the game did not prevent us, more specifically me, from planning. In it's current state the game looked very good and had fun moments, but it was not interesting to play. You were given many resources for free, and didn't interact with a lot of the game. What it needed was more strategy and choice. So I and some other members of the team brainstormed, and we came up with plenty of ideas. However, we only had one more semester of development and needed to be able to not just complete but refine any system we chose to set out for. Each new mechanic addressed a lack the game held. A new environment for replayability, new dinos to diversify the pool and bring a larger variety of playstyles, an overhaul of the original simple mark system, and two new buff mechanics for choice, visual style, and strategic complexity.

In the second semester we would refine our game and integrate our new team members into the project to make the best game possible.

The most prominent aspect of this semester was scope. During planning over break ideas were consistently kept to a reasonable possibility with our development time. As we worked though it was clear that some estimates were wrong. We handled overscoping quickly and decisively though, and we immediately discussed and cut both pieces and entire systems. Many parts of the game were iterated upon to require less effort to make and it was up to me to ensure these cuts and shifts still held true to the vision of the game.