Heartland Post Mortem

Our final project for studio 2 was the “Home” game. It was a fantastic project and from the get go I was incredibly excited to work with the team and got straight into brainstorming. As it was a four week project we needed an idea that was going to impress at Synergy our final year showcase but still be scoped enough to be done in the time frame. One of the most beneficial processes we went through in the early stages of the project was going around and everyone talking about what home meant to them personally. It was incredible to hear that each and every member had a different feeling and meaning around home. Once we were all on the same page and were happy to base the game around family and how home is impacted by changes to family we got into the really good idea breakdowns. One of our main inspirations was “Valiant Hearts” a short narrative side scrolling experience from Ubisoft. The beautiful score behind the games trailer immediately evoked emotions in the team and gave us a clear feeling we wanted to aim for with our game. Although throughout the project the game changed many times, I believe the final outcome really hit that perfect bittersweet feeling we were aiming for. This was due to carefully crafted systems, level design and dialogue which needed extensive tweaking to get things just right.

After we pitched the game to the class in the first week of the project and reshaping the idea from the feedback, we were tasked with getting a mechanically complete prototype up in a week. As we had not worked with programmers at all throughout the semester this was a very interesting experience. On one hand it was fantastic to have the security blanket of a programmer being able to code much better and to a more complex standard than us designers. However as the programmers had been left separated from the design students up to this point in the Trimester our communication, work styles and documentation processes were very different. This added some undue stress as we had to consistently make sure everyone was on the same page and working towards a common goal. This mixed with peoples busy out of uni schedules was an interesting and difficult time to get through. As we had a fantastic and dedicated team we had our mechanically sound build by the play test. Our idea had become Heartland, a game about a farmer whose life you would follow for multiple days and seeing how war would affect him while he was completing his daily rituals of chores around his farm. We had created a quite expansive level which turned out to bite us, as the player was an old man we had made him slow to move and obviously gained the exact same feedback from every player saying to speed him up.

This was time for our first pivot, we had a predetermined narrative already set out with daily schedules but since the actual gameplay was so slow there was no way to hold a players interest for long enough, especially since we were presenting the game in a showcase setting. We scoped the game down to only a few days so instead of the 13 planned we shrunk it down to about 3 and also completely redesigned the level to be one static area instead of two separated areas. This really honed the players vision on the important parts of the level since some of the other feedback we had gotten from the first playtest was that players got no feedback on what they could and couldn’t actually interact with. This information became pivotal for our final build. This week was also a really stressful one with our project manager being away on the lesson where we pivoted, this resulted in us losing a bunch of time, literally days, reiterating what we were pivoting to and what everyone had to work on and for what deadline. During this time things got pretty tense, communication was completely via text and as with previous experiences things get taken totally out of context and unfortunately this was a problem that occured. This lead to one member of the team burning out and not coming in to the class on monday. With the analytics only playtest coming up on Wednesday unfortunately there was only one thing to do. With two days to go. We pivoted again.

This was a great move for the final product as what we pivoted and scoped down to ended up being what we polished and made into the game we are proud to stand next to. But this was an insanely stressful time. The lack of contact until the day before the play-test was nerve wracking and pushed me to my absolute limits. Unfortunately all the stress was for nothing as we failed to get a build up in time and were unable to play-test and had to have a crisis meeting scheduled for the team. The meeting was one of frustration and relief at the same time, we found out that it was a simple communication error and within 5 minutes the team was back all on the same page and more excited than ever to work on this final project. This was a great feeling and with one final play-test on the cards we were dedicated and diligent in getting a working build together.

The final play-test was fantastic. It was really the first time I had constructed a actually valuable play-test survey. One of the key questions I asked was “What did the game make you feel?” I got the one answer I was looking for and it was not from a student from our cohort. That exact word I brought up earlier “Bittersweet”. This filled me with confidence and pride and many of the other questions like asking if people understood the narrative, which a high percent did was so rewarding. We got absolutely berated about our credits screen which was interesting as it wasn’t something I had really thought much about ever, but when explained that we have only two options in our game and one is horrible why would you want to look at the other? It was a fantastic learning experience about the importance of polish in every little spot even the credits. All in all the play-test gave us valuable feedback which we took to heart and spent our last days adding the new features and polishing every little bit of the game. In every project I have ever worked on I got to a point where I hated the game, I just didn’t have the patience to keep working on it in fear of losing my sanity. Heartland was a whole new monster. I couldn’t wait to show the game at each and every stage of development, I showed it to friends, family and most importantly industry professionals at Synergy.

Showcasing Heartland at Synergy was an interesting experience. Although it was a game I am very proud of and has already given me recognition gaining 300 views on my Itch.io page in less than a week when the game isn’t even on my page. It was incredibly difficult to showcase. Heartland is a very personal and methodical experience, something the player needs to interact with in quiet and safety to fully grasp the feelings we were going for. Being on a showroom floor with over 20 games around us and a packed out auditorium I don’t think Heartland was able to shine. In saying that though we got some industry devs and past students to okay through the game in its entirety and got some great feedback. This lead to fantastic networking opportunities and I was even given a few business cards from industry professionals which felt really good. Synergy overall was a great success and celebration of all the hard work everyone had put into their games, I was proud to stand with my team in front of something we created. Although Heartland underwent many changes throughout the development cycle, I can confidently say that it is the exact game I wanted to make going into the project and it has improved my soft and hard skills as a developer.