Team Members: The team, Strawberry Turtles, expanded to include eleven people:

• Sean Kennedy, lead game designer
• Kayla Sawyer, level and audio designer
• Tim Seyfert, producer and game balance designer
• Brian Baron, lead programmer
• Colin Brady, programmer
• Ben MacDonald, lead 3D artist
• Yvonne Lee, lead artist
• Joe Masucci, VFX artist and animator
• Jodie Garner, 3D artist
• Matt Rhine, consulting game designer
• Tim Chartier, consulting tech artist

Platform: PC. Made using the Unity engine.

Project Timeline: Sept. 4, 2017 - May 12, 2018; 25 one-week sprints (participated beginning Jan. 24; 13 sprints)

Hours Worked: 220 hours (77 testing, 64 design, 46 production, 18 programming); project total 2150 hours

Contributions: I had four major roles: producer, QA liaison, systems/balance designer, and programmer.

The biggest challenge we faced, as a team, was a complete revamp of the project starting in the second semester. There was an early meeting in which the team realized the game would be better off as a 2v2 competitive game than the 4-player cooperative game that we had at the time. I contributed to this decision both as a producer and as a designer. As a producer, I saw that the game would fit more in our scope if we focused on redesigning (and reprogramming) the UI and gameplay than if we worked on an enemy AI. As a designer, I saw more potential for teamwork and player interactions with smaller teams. The designer in me also encouraged the creation of the island game modes (which hadn't existed in first semester), although as a producer I had worries that the islands would stretch our scope. (Those turned out to be unfounded, fortunately.)

Another reason why the team approached me  to join them was because they wanted the game to feature a wide variety of wacky weaponry. However, doing so meant that each weapon needed to be balanced both in isolation and in the greater context of the game. I contributed to this by both designing a number of weapons and by tweaking their numbers. In designing weapons, I focused on how we could meld strong gameplay and the wacky nautical theme to create effects that could be easily adjusted as balance issues arose. Then, after weapons were implemented, I leveraged my role as QA liaison to observe their effects in-game so that I could better adjust the weapons. This included both numerical changes -- such as adjusting the damage or stun duration of various weapons -- and "softer" adjustments, such as requesting our programmers update the firing angles of catapults and cannons to better fit a theme and to make those weapons easier (or, in some cases, harder) to use.

I contributed to this game by prototyping systems and concepts where I could. Specifically, I dove into prototyping the catapults, a new feature for the second semester. Once I felt I had progressed them as far as I was able, I handed them off to the programmers to finalize implementation. I also was responsible for creating the game's "kiosk mode", where the game would play a trailer and return to the main menu after being idle for a period of time. I handed this off to our programmers once I felt it was mostly done and needed a handful of bugfixes.

Senior capstone at Champlain College is a two-semester project. I joined this team after cuts were made at the end of the first semester so that I could bring my organizational and management skills to the team. My primary duties as a producer were to facilitate daily communication, negotiate scope with the team, keep work organized (both internally and where posted for others to view), remove impediments as they showed up, and help the team maintain a healthy attitude and approach to work (by delaying or cutting work where necessary and providing donuts where I could). Acting as a producer on this team faced me with two major challenges: the team was larger than any other I'd worked on, and the team had established scrum practices I was not used to. I was forced to adapt and reach outside my usual toolbox to help my team as best I could.

As a kind of subset of producer work, I acted as the team's primary QA liaison. This means I was responsible for signing up for, attending, and summarizing test sessions with Champlain College's QA labs. (For context, each game development student is required to attend QA as a tester three times per semester.) Perhaps the biggest responsibility here was creating feedback forms for testers; I had to strike a balance between including questions from every member of the team about their work and keeping the forms short enough that testers wouldn't lose focus partway through. Then, using my background in mathematics and statistics, I compiled the data from feedback forms and my personal notes into a summary I could present to my team and my class.

Game Context: First, players compete in a mostly-friendly ship battle. The pirates' ships are, of course, towed by a whale, which will follow the bait you shoot into the water (junk food or sushi, depending on team.) Ships also come equipped with standard armaments such as cannonballs, pufferfish, sea urchins, and jellyfish. Your aft catapults take heavier-duty weaponry, such as flaming barrels, anchorchucks, and manatees.

After sinking their friends' ship, the victors tow the losers to the nearest island. While the losers patch their ship up, the winners snag one of the keys to the Ultimate Treasure. Then the second game mode begins: players must run around the island delivering ammo crates and ammo chests to resupply their ship's weapons. Players have to avoid bear traps left behind on the island, or they'll be stunned and drop whatever they're holding. They can also pick up objects (bones, coconuts, etc.) to whack enemies with so they can steal their goods.

After alternating between ship and island combat, one team or the other will end up with three keys. This team wins Nautical Nonsense, and gets to celebrate on Victory Island while the loser team putters about on Loser Island.

Postmortem: We have published Nautical Nonsense on itch.io. This game is by far my proudest accomplishment, and watching others have fun with our game has been incredibly satisfying.

We faced a lot of challenges in production. The semester essentially started with the team doing a 180 on design. This meant we had to do a lot of work to make sure the new direction was working, but it also reinvigorated the team to reach our new goals. In all the excitement, one of my jobs was to make sure no one took on more than they could handle.

We handled production well towards the middle and end of the semester, planning for disruptions such as GDC and deadlines such as our poster for the senior show well in advance. The last several weeks turned into crunch, with several team members putting in 30+ hours on the project without sacrificing time on other classes. While I wish I had helped scope things better, I know that some level of crunch is more or less unavoidable.

My biggest regret on Nautical Nonsense was sticking to the tow-whale mechanic too strongly. I had some doubts when it was first introduced, but since it fit the theme so well, I decided not to speak out and let it go to testing. We ended up spending a lot of time on the tow-whale to get it to QA and then tweaking it to see if we could make it "good enough", and I'm still not satisfied with it. I learned to listen to my gut; next time I'm in a situation like this, I'll speak up early and see if we can find a better solution.

Overall, I think we created a great game that feels good to play and is very polished, especially on the technical side of things. I would love a chance to work with my senior team again.