My role
Game Designer | Level Designer | Gameplay Programmer
This was a group project where I worked as the Game Designer, I thought of the game Idea and the mechanics from scratch, designed everything together and made the maps. I also wrote the level mechanics and multiple gameplay elements.
Introduction
Light's out was a 4 person group project where we worked together for a month and all pitched an idea to turn into a game. It's a party game of tag where you run away using the powerups and the map mechanics to your advantage. You can play with up to four people using either controller or keyboard controls.
Key learning points:
Map Design
In Light's out, I designed the core gameplay/powerups and all maps and their respective mechanics. I tried aiming for 1 special mechanic per map and the first map being a standard/learning map
Challenges
The main challenges that I had in this project was learning how to properly balance every character and map. Changing a powerup or part of the map can tremendously influence gameplay and make it very fun or very boring. That's why I did a lot of playtesting and noted down all the things that were confusing to people and what made the experience fun for people.
Difficulties
This project made me appreciate the importance of team synergy and team work as this was lacking a bit in this project. In later projects I focused a LOT more on communication and team building as it truly is an essential part of game development.
I truly had a lot of fun working on the project, designing the game as a whole but if I could do it over again, I would have focused more on the social part. In the long run, this was a very important thing to learn and I'm glad I learned it in this project.
