Dev Log

At the end of October 2020, Team 15 had trimmed down into Team 37 with one programmer, two artists, one writer, and one producer. Compared to other teams in our capstone running at sizes of 8-10 members, our project was considered at-risk if we weren't able to put together a solid prototype to attract new teammates and prove to the teaching staff that our game was worth developing past the next two week sprint.

Based on our paper prototype feedback, we put more focus on the narrative and art direction. Taking inspiration from Hades and Okami, we began researching Japanese Shintoism as we planned to expand the adventure into multiple areas with various gods, spirits, and abilities.

After an extensive brainstorm session to narrow down what exactly we wanted to see in our game, we used our paper prototype from Miro to lay the building blocks for our 2d isometric adventure in Unity.

Those two weeks of solo-programming provided us with 8-directional movement, a dialogue system, collectible objects that restore the player’s temperature (health), a rudimentary combat system, interact-able objects which serve as puzzles, two early art assets for Hanami and the snow spirits, and our then main mechanic of Spirit Walking.

With students being able to advertise their games during the last online lecture of a sprint, we put together our first promotional video and presented it to the class.

By November 7, 2020 we had successfully garnered the interest of one programmer and one game designer/composer who would help define Project Miko's signature mechanics and soundtrack.

Approaching the final two week sprint of the prototyping phase, our team had regained not only membership, but confidence in our project.

Thanks for reading and that's all for now!
-Michael ✌️