Knight Time Rush (Cancelled)
- 20+ person project
- Top-down action boss-battler
- Made in Unity
- ~1 year in development (2019-20)
- Role: Design Lead
- Contributions: New member training, oversaw ~5 development cells, designed player moveset
Overview
This project saw our members divided among smaller ~5-person “cells”, each with members from our art, systems, and design teams.
Our goal in adopting this structure was to give individual members a greater sense of investment by allowing them more creative control over their portions of the game.
As a Design Lead, my responsibility was to regularly check in with each of these teams, understand where they are and what they need, and facilitate communication between them and other parties.
This included formal meetings between each team and all the Team Leads at certain project milestones where we verified that each cell's work was progressing according to schedule.
Lessons Learned
Keep your limitations in mind when deciding on your development structure.
Our more modular approach to development during this project did have some benefits, but it ultimately was not feasible for us at the time. Due to our completely voluntary approach, some participation drop-off every year is inevitable, which decimated some of our small development modules. Team Leads had to fill in the gaps, but many teams were left unworkably sparse.
Some projects don't come together in the end.
Our existing issues with our development structure coincided with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, rendering our remaining members with very little wherewithal for participation and unable to complete the project. As sad as it is to see your work not come to fruition, it's an occasional reality of all creative projects, and you can apply the lessons from these cases to future endeavors.
Our more modular approach to development during this project did have some benefits, but it ultimately was not feasible for us at the time. Due to our completely voluntary approach, some participation drop-off every year is inevitable, which decimated some of our small development modules. Team Leads had to fill in the gaps, but many teams were left unworkably sparse.
Some projects don't come together in the end.
Our existing issues with our development structure coincided with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, rendering our remaining members with very little wherewithal for participation and unable to complete the project. As sad as it is to see your work not come to fruition, it's an occasional reality of all creative projects, and you can apply the lessons from these cases to future endeavors.