Week 13:
Reflection/Post Mortem

REFLECTION TIME

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GETAWAY

I am sat writing this on our last day of the project and essentially, our last day of university. I am so so pleased with the outcome of the project. Getaway showcases our best skills, capabilities and passions. The project sums up what Kiera and I are most interested in, creating games with positive impact and change. We pushed our boundaries this year and developed a game that was so far from what we are used to. I'm so proud of the both of us for developing something outside our comfort zone, and the experience itself I am just as proud of. Getaway has come a long way since our initial idea and we faced many problems along the way. But here we are now, able to overcome all of them!

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Not only did we push ourselves to create a physical experience, but we used a new program that we had no idea about and I am so glad we did. The future potential that gesture control has I think is great and the ability to interact this way through a simple set-up using your webcam can be extremely beneficial in other health-based scenarios. I loved focusing my time on something completely different to what I am used to, and I absolutely love the outcome. Not to mention the fact that I was able to focus on my favourite things, music and art! These were two really important factors of our experience and I believe we fulfilled both expectations to our highest potential. I loved every second - apart from the stresses of the detection not working at times!
 

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LEAD ARTIST

I took responsibility of Lead Artist this project, amongst other tasks, I focused mainly on the visual design. I was able to showcase one of my best skills in the project, as well as define the look of the game purely on my own, which I found really fun. I created a series of documents to support asset creation, because Kiera also has a passion for this art style. It was a great opportunity for us both to showcase our skills, and I think it gave the project a more unique and personal style to it, which I feel fit its purpose well. With this responsibility, I was able to review our asset creation and provide feedback to make necessary changes, to ensure the outcome of our assets were as visually pleasing as possible, and of the highest quality. It's certainly a role I'd love to take further in the future, because Art Direction really interests me. It was interesting how the visual design tied into every other component.

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THE TEAM

BitShort Studio! Working with Kiera was the best part of the year. Not only is Kiera my best-friend, but my studio partner! We were able to combine our ideas and bring them to life, as we are usually used to discussing our ideas over dinner and forgetting about them the next day. This time, we took something we were really passionate about and worked really hard to achieve our goals. The project pushed both of our boundaries and we have certainly learned so much along the way. Whether that's to do with the process of 'Image Classification' or how to animate hand-drawings, it was all worth it in the end.

 

As a team we performed really well. We made a schedule that we mostly stuck by, apart from getting thrown off by our many problems throughout the course of the project. Luckily, we managed to work things out and come up with suitable solutions for our limitations. This was the benefit of working with a hard-working partner and friend, I knew Kiera's dedication combined with my own would lead us through the project successfully. Kiera's main role was Technical Lead, where she worked hard to adjust and improve many versions of the game as a result of our testing and my picky behaviours. She was in charge of GitKraken and other technical adjustments, whereas I focused mainly on the visual and sound design, and marketing material. It was great to combine our skills and develop something we never thought we could, as we are both used to purely being 2D artists and Games Designers. I am immensely proud of Kiera and I wouldn't have wanted to work on this project with anyone else.

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WHAT WENT WELL?
We managed to pull off a project that at first seemed out of reach. There were so many implications along the way that we were able to find solutions for, and at every stage we tried our hardest to achieve the best outcome we could. Considering our major focus was sound, visual and interaction design, I'd say we did a great job at all three. We managed to produce a uniquely composed soundtrack, purely hand-drawn visuals and gesture control input. These three elements work together to provide people with the means to escape and get lost in their surroundings. The effects of these design choices successfully evoke feelings of calm, relaxation, comfort and security within players. What we did best is focus on this in detail, to really get the most out of our experience and provide players with what we proposed.

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All that's left to do is hand-in!

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WHAT DIDN'T GO WELL?

It wouldn't have been a successful project without a few problems along the way of course. We faced many issues with the detection and technical sides of the project, rather than the creating, visual sides of things. This is because we were facing a program that we were not used to, but with great perseverance, Kiera worked extremely hard to overcome these issues and now we have a successfully functioning outcome! Due to a lot of problem-solving at the start of the project, we were set back a little. This was a result of concerns with the initial box idea, as we were so set on this, but had to make an informed decision to reduce the size of the scope. We came to the conclusion to set up a teaser of the physical space idea, which still achieves our intended player experience, with less technical limitations, software and hardware.

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IMPROVEMENTS FOR NEXT TIME

An idea I had for next time is to conduct more playtesting with our particular target audience. It might have been useful to visit local schools and carry out testing here, or even organise a playtesting session on our main University campus. This is definitely something we should consider for next time, because we could've spoken with more people who struggle with these issues on a day to day basis. This would've been great to gather more feedback from people across the city. We did conduct a series of effective playtests and we are happy with this outcome, but for next time, we should definitely go further with this.

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A HAPPY END NOTE

Enough criticism, it's time to end on a happy note. I am feeling mixed emotions towards the end of my university experience. I am sad to be leaving my friends, tutors and peers behind, but I am ready to see where the world takes me. I am going to miss the studio and working in team BitShort (for the time being;)) and I cannot believe university has come to an end. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed working on Getaway, because it's a project that means a lot to me and has a lot of passion behind it. I am so happy I had the chance to work on it with one of my best-friends, and I can't wait to see where this journey takes the both of us.

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For now, to whoever is reading, I hope you enjoyed reading through the process of our development, and I hope you enjoy Getaway.

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If this project taught me one thing, it's to getaway, during moments when I've reached my peak.

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- 1/2 BitShort, Emilia Poyiadgi.