Curse That Magic Cat!
CURSE THAT MAGIC CAT! is a lighthearted, single-player game in which you have been cursed to be a cat. Explore an evil wizard's mansion and collect spell books in each level to escape. Along the way, take your revenge by making Magnus the Wizard curse the day he cursed you!
GAME INFORMATION
Role: Game Designer / Team Leader
Date: August-December 2020
Team Size: 12
Genre: Simulator, Stealth
Engine: Unreal Engine 4
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Responsibilities
TEAM MEMBER
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Checked in regularly with team members
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Presented project progress, setbacks, and goals to stakeholders each milestone
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Assisted producer with crafting milestone plans
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Served as QA, tracking bugs and issues on JIRA
GAME DESIGN
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Wrote and maintained live game design documentation
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Coordinated with leads team to create achievable sprint goals for each of art, programming, and design
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Ensured all members of the team were up to date on the most current game design and had their questions answered
Click each image for details and a larger view.
CURSE THAT MAGIC CAT - GALLERY
DESIGN HIGHLIGHTS
Design Pillars
The design for Cat! began with three design pillars that gave rise to the rest of the game and informed all our decisions.
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Balancing acts: Players should always be negotiating trade-offs, such as whether to lose time but score more points by taking a longer route.
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Lively worlds: The world should react to player actions in both straightforward ways (leaving rubble where something was broken) and humorous ones (letting the player spin by standing on our floating spell books).
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Multiple paths: Players should always have many ways to complete the level, whether in terms of gameplay style or hidden paths between rooms.
EXAMPLE: The balconies in this image represent one of many multiple paths in the game.
Another example of the pillars in play is the cat colors, as they required balancing speed and exploration in order to unlock.
Feature Specification
Creating HUD and menu flow mockups in Photoshop/Adobe XD allowed me to clearly communicate feature requirements to my team.
Based on team member requests, I not only outlined broader design goals, but also specific features and functionalities for the game. These primarily took the form of tables and mock-ups for UI elements.
EXAMPLE: This HUD mockup was created to show team members which UI elements I wanted shown on screen, their purpose, and one possible layout for them.
I updated the GDD with mockups like these as they were requested and made. The team then iterated until we reached a final layout based on my specifications.
Team Leadership
Connecting with each of my teammates was deeply important to me as a team lead. Though I specified designs and features, their work was truly at the heart of our development.
To support them, I wore many hats. I helped with asset list creation, QA, task creation, and presenting milestones to stakeholders. I promoted team unity with traditions, such as adding a new cat photo (in keeping with our game's theme) to our wall each day. While many management tasks were handled by our stellar producer, I also initiated regular meetings with team leads throughout development.
EXAMPLE: Each milestone, I organized the team into cross-discipline groups to playtest Cat!. This ensured everyone got to know each other and could provide me feedback on the game.
Regular meetings of my fantastic team leads helped keep all disciplines invested and on the same page.
POSTMORTEM
What Went Well
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Iteration. Getting so many of our features on screen during prototype phases meant I could quickly see what worked and what didn't as I played.
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Team testing days. Bringing the disciplines together each milestone to test the game meant we began and ended every sprint on the same page as one another. This built both a smoother workflow and better appreciation of each other's contributions as we went.
What Was Learned
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Different teams need different things. This was my second time acting as Game Designer and team lead on a project, and both experiences were unique. Ensuring developer engagement and efficient development means different things for each group of people, which I took to heart while making Cat!
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Aim high; plan for the lows. I initially designed several features more conservatively than I might have due to our small team size and my concern that development time would be limited. However, as my team knocked each milestone out of the park, I learned to trust them and expand scope carefully, taking their feedback into account and creating mitigation plans in case we needed to change course.