Twilight Harvest Postmortem

Introduction

Our game, as well as our group, Team Watermelon, was created for the purpose of completing the Game Production class at GBC. We were given 1 semester to create a game of our choice as a group, and this is exactly what we did. We chose to create Twilight Harvest. Our goal was to successfully merge a number of popular game genres, such as survival, farming, and strategy, into one enjoyable package, and I believe we succeeded in our goal, although it certainly wasn’t without its challenges.

What Went Right?

We achieved the goal we set in the beginning, and created the game we wanted to create. The group got along well, conversions were free of conflict, and new ideas were taken into consideration with gratitude. The group members largely played to their strengths, taking jobs that they were confident they’d be able to complete, and prioritizing the more important tasks.

The game was largely enjoyable to work on, which is important for long projects such as this one. Group members were excited to participate and add to the project, and with each completed milestone, new goals were set.

Proper testing was done throughout the span of the game's creation, making sure bugs were sorted out, mechanics were working properly, and ensuring that at each step, the game was fun to play.

The team was able to adapt as plans changed, the pivoting away from having numerous plant types and towards having a more varied selection of enemies was done smoothly, and those in charge of the process were vocal about the progress that was made.

The game was finished on time, with all of the planned features, and a few more that were planned and added along the way.

What Went Wrong?

There were quite a few hurdles to work through, many were hurdles that can be found within any group project, while others can be attributed to the fact that for a majority of the group, it was their first time working on such a project. Our goals were set a bit too high in the beginning, we initially wanted to add more mechanics to the process, such as a crafting mechanic and a higher number of different types of plants than appear in the finished product. We were able to recognize that our vision was slightly unrealistic given the time frame, and we were able to effectively dial back our goal to something more achievable, without damaging the quality of the finished product.

For some, problems arose related to using programs such as Unity and Github. Since the applications were still unfamiliar to some, productivity was occasionally halted, but this was seen less once more experience was gained.

There was often a lack of communication within the group, and an occasional lack of initiative, which caused some members to have to do far more work than others.

In Conclusion

Although there were hiccups along the way, This project was an overall success, and an excellent learning experience for the whole team. In the future, we will all work to take more initiative as to streamline the production process, Improve organization, and continue to put our best foot forward in all that we do.

Databox

Developer: Team Watermelon

Length of Development: 4 Months

Development Tools: Visual Studio, Github, Unity, Blender