General Information
Game Summary
Take on the role of Bud-e, a robotic cop on a mission to stop a crime organization from spreading a deadly virus called "RAID". Your enemies, the "Scrappers", will stop at nothing to ensure the virus spreads, and it's up to you to take them down using a variety of combat techniques and futuristic weaponry.
As you progress through the game, you'll face tougher challenges and stronger enemies, culminating in a final showdown with the powerful crime boss, "Ne0". With fast-paced action and engaging combat Bud-e is the ultimate robotic cop ready to take on any challenge and save the city from destruction.
Development Information
Key Features
Combat Trial
Surrounded by enemy Scrappers, the only way out is a shoot-out. Fight for your life and reach the end of the futuristic city.
Time Trial
Stuck in an industrial warehouse filled with turrets and moving obstacles, use your ability to slow down time to reach the exit before the timer runs out.
Final Boss
After completing the other trials go head to head with Ne0 and defeat him to take down the Scrappers and saving the city from the RAID virus.
Team Size: 6
Project Duration: 17 weeks (January 2022 - May 2022)
Engine: Unity
Platform: PC
Store: Itch.io
Project Role & Responsibilities
Main Role: Producer
Secondary Role: UI Designer
Lead and managed workflow for a team of 6 game developers to deliver a high-quality game project on schedule.
Facilitated daily scrums and managed four 3-week sprints for a cross-functional team to ensure project goals and deadlines were met.
Managed formal documentation, project schedules, and milestones, including creating and maintaining design documents.
Performed regular 1-on-1 meetings with members of the team to ensure personal issues/concerns were identified.
Created UI/UX elements for players to use throughout the game, including menus, buttons, a unique crosshair, and health bar.
Phases and Process
This project started from a high concept that the original vision holder had created, which was "Play as Bud-e, a robot cop set into the slightly distant future and put a stop to an underground crime organization.". From this high concept, we started to brainstorm different features and mechanics that we could have throughout the game. Since we knew we were in a futuristic setting, the group also started creating mood boards that would fit the style of the game.
The main selling points we wanted for our game was a robotic player character, puzzle solving, and interesting combat mechanics.With this we started to brainstorm mechanics like slowing down time, laser rifles, grappling hooks, and teleportation.
Throughout the concept phase we also started to write out a simple narrative for the game, including the enemies and final boss. We already knew that our main character would be named “Bud-e”, so we worked off that and created “Scrappers” as the enemies and “Ne0” as the final boss. After coming up with the characters, Sarah created some concept art to go along with them.
As the producer, I knew we only had 4 months to create this game from start to finish, so I prioritized keeping the games scope small at first to ensure we didn’t run into scope creep and to try and avoid any unnecessary risks throughout the project. We used a Discord server to communicate remotely for daily scrums throughout the week and used JIRA to keep track of tasks and hours throughout the project.
Pre-Production Phase
Once we started pre-production, we narrowed down the exact mechanics we wanted to focus on and designed our levels around each one of them. By doing this we knew that we can have three separate levels, each with a special mechanic that was needed to use to complete the level. We focused on shooting/combat and slowing down time for the main two levels, and then combined them for the boss level.
We had four sprints, each being three weeks long, throughout the project so we dedicated the first 3 sprint to completing a level per sprint, and the last sprint for final touches and bug fixes throughout the levels. This allowed us to not have to split our focus on multiple areas and could really narrow down on each level during each sprint to ensure they all were high quality and enjoyable to play through.
Production Phase
During the production phase we had the 3D artists work on getting the main character and enemy models completed, the assets for the levels, and working on unique lighting for all the levels. Along with this we decided to create a hub level that would allow the players to access the first two levels in either order before going to the boss fight. Our programmers created the main combat and movement mechanics that were used throughout the levels and the basic AI that the enemies used to track the players.
Throughout the next four sprints, the teams would continue to develop the game until its publication on Itch.io, and I would continually schedule 1-on-1 talks with team members to discuss any issues that they had and I managed to resolve their issues and improve the teams overall productivity.
One of the main challenges I encountered throughout this project was that we originally didn’t have anyone on our team who understood version control so we had a lot of github issues with assets disappearing and parts of the project not saving correctly, so we ended up having sometimes to redo aspects of the project, which negatively affected our productivity.
Another big challenge I faced throughout this project was making sure we stayed in scope of the project. Due to only having 4 sprints to work with I had to keep a close eye on the scope to ensure we didn’t have any unnecessary risks and we only worked on aspects of the project that were vital to its success.
Challenges Encountered
Boss Level
In-Engine Screenshot
Boss Level Loading Art
By: Sarah Rootsey
Speed Level Loading Art
By: Sarah Rootsey
Speed Level
In-Engine Screenshot
Ne0 Concept Art
By: Sarah Rootsey
Concept Phase
Maxwell Tabin
