Maria Fleischer | Namin Hansen | Maryse Heilig | Philip Hildebrandt
Daria Pankau | Felix Szczesny | Alexander Tilly | Lila Pimpão Niederle
6th semester, 2021 | Game Design at HTW Berlin
3D Game | vertical slice
3 months
Prof. Susanne Brandhorst | Prof. Thomas Bremer
Team
Date
Constraints
Duration
Supervised by
Slideways
swing high little one.
PROJECT DETAILS
SLIDEWAYS is a 3rd person action-adventure game in which you explore an abandoned coast town with only your ladder in tow. Navigate the environment and learn new skills as you activate enigmatic wind-powered contraptions to restore movement to the world and unveil its secrets.
MY CONTRIBUTION
Gameplay Programming | Technical Art |
Project Management
I had decided I wanted to create a vertical slice of a game concept instead of tiny half finished games. I was responsible for finding the right people for this project and keeping it all together. Other than that, I mainly worked on the camera and other gameplay implementation, as well as the shaders and visual effects.
DEVELOPMENT
We started with an Ideation phase to find a concept that inspired us. Our vision was to create a skill-based and easy to learn movement with a lot of flow. We decided on an exploration game with hidden challenges at every corner. Since this was the first time working in such a big group, we created our first prototype in a game jam before the semester. This helped us to pin down the core mechanics and evaluate the group dynamic.
The rest of the project we worked in sprints on our respective tasks, sharing progress in weekly meetings. Being responsible for holding it all together, I spent a lot of time in meetings. While probably putting on too many hats in this project, I learned a lot about team management and the importance of a strong vision keeper.
Due to lack of time we weren't able to implement all features we had originally planned. We limited ourselves to the minimum to introduce the main features and give an idea of the game feel. This was our biggest project in university with a lot of unknowns and we had so much fun working in a bigger team with a different approach than usually.
