Cliffhangers

As producer I was responsible for:

• Directing the project's overall vision

• Organising & Coordinating all disciplinary teams together

• Setting Tasks based on priority & scope, tasks which included important information such as description of task, deadline, assigned person, images, etc

• Hosting weekly meetings with department leads to track progress and set weekly tasks

• Ensuring that the project was in scope for our deadline

To organise tasks and deadlines, I decided to utilise a Kanban Board on Microsoft Teams; split into Design, Tech, Art, Animation & Production disciplines.

I also hosted regular QA playtesting sessions with other University students. I produced different feedback forms for each session to focus on that week's tasks, gathering Quantitative and Qualitative feedback; this allowed me to better understand the key gameplay issues that needed fixing and allowed for easier iteration for the Design team. Many valuable gameplay features were then added, for example: better tutorialisation, player rings to improve clarity, adjusted pit size, removed/edited traps, etc.

As part of the module, I had to present a game pitch to a group of lecturers that acted as Industry Stakeholders "Sharks". I produced a powerpoint presentation that I presented on the University's Live Stream, communicating the game's vision, elevator pitch, scope, game loop and current progress at the second week of development. 

After presenting, the Sharks asked questions about feasibility, design decisions, production scope, etc that I had to answer and discuss.

At the end of the Collaborative module, my team and I presented Cliffhangers alongside other group's projects whilst lecturers playtested our games in a competition. Cliffhangers was nominated for 5 awards and won Industry Choice Award! This was decided by real industry partners of the University of Staffordshire.

After the success of the Collab project and clear passion from team members, I decided to continue development of Cliffhangers in a smaller team with the end goal of commercially selling it on Steam and Itch. I gathered and organised a new team of passionate graduates from the original group and new members from other courses. I decided to stay on as Producer / Project Lead. The new project will feature: online multiplayer functionality, a completely new art style, new traps, character customisation, map choices, and more.