Abrakajumpa

Leading a Collaborative Adventure: Capstone Project

Role: Production Lead
Timeline: January 2024 - June 2024
Tools: Unity, Miro, CI/CD Pipelines

Context

Abrakajumpa is a magical platformer game we made while doing my capstone at UC Santa Cruz. We wanted to build an experience that was responsive while retaining high challenges and fun through jump mechanics and spellbinding themes. I was the production lead responsible for the management of our teams’ workflow and ticking all the time-based milestones. I was responsible for the communication, development coordination, and playtesting for ensuring high quality of gameplay.

Challenge

Creating a good platformer game wasn’t easy, the moment we started actually developing it, I faced multiple development challenges. The main hurdles were balancing creativity with technical limitations, managing team dynamics and making sure we had a smooth development process but could deliver a user friendly game interface.

Key Challenges:

  • Clear communication and coordination of work amongst a set of people with different areas of expertise.

  • To make sure gameplay mechanics and level design was fun and accessible, one hand playable.

  • Whether it is trying to bring as much to a game technically while having it come out looking as gorgeous as possible; or trying to introduce some innovative feature and staying within a certain block of the technical specification sheet.

Role

Since I was the production lead, it was my job to make sure that the rest of our team ran smoothly and efficiency. I essentially spent time to coordinate tasks, run meetings, and oversee communication with the necessary individuals to keep everyone on the same page as it pertained to project goals. I also attended playtesting sessions, managing to gather feedback to adjust the game mechanics, design and user experience.

Apart from leadership I was also engaged in coding and debugging. To keep our development process streamlined we set up CI/CD pipelines using Git where we can continuously incorporate new features or fix bugs in real time.

Design Solutions

One-Hand Accessibility

  • Our goal in designing this game was to make it playable one handed, so it can be played by more people. To achieve this though we had to simplify some of our controls while not making them any less complex in terms of the game play.

  • User Insight: “I love that I can play with one hand — it’s surprisingly comfortable and doesn’t feel like it limits the experience.”

One-Hand Accessibility

  • Multiple playtesting sessions helped us gather the feedback to improve the gameplay, interface and user experience. I learned from the insights on how to hone level design, average difficulty curve, and perfect game mechanics.

  • User Insight: “The level difficulty is well-balanced, and the gameplay feels more engaging after the tweaks.”

CI/CD Pipelines

  • For the sake of ease of development, I designed CI/CD pipelines allowing us to keep code up to date and build and deliver new builds as quickly as possible. It allowed us to tackle bugs while still being able to easily test new features without affecting workflow.

Managing Team Dynamics

Weekly Meetings & Communication Tools

  • Having worked with a team spread across various roles I made sure we had weekly meetings to track progress and issues to overcome. To track tasks and to quickly respond to any blockers or issues that came up during development we used Google Sheets.

  • Team Insight: “The structured meetings kept us on track and helped us tackle problems before they became big issues.”

Balancing Creativity with Technical Limitations

  • We had great ideas for the game we wanted to make, but we needed to find a balance between this level of creativity and technical feasibility. I collaborated very closely with the engine and design leads to figure out what is the most important, cut where we could, and ship within the necessary time frame.

  • Team Insight: “It was hard letting go of some creative ideas, but prioritizing the core features helped us deliver a solid game.”

Results & Impact

Key Metrics:

  • Playtester Feedback: For innovative gameplay, responsive controls and captivating visuals it was praised by players.

  • User Engagement: The gamemakers determined that playtesters liked the balance between challenge and accessibility found in the game.

  • Team Coordination: We were able to stay on schedule and hit our milestones through clear communication, and well structured meetings.

Key Outcomes:

  • Increased Playability: The game was easily playable for a wider audience because of the one-hand accessibility feature.

  • Polished Game Mechanics: From playtests, this feedback directly effected the quality of the games mechanics, specifically jump control and level design.

  • Efficient Development Process: Streamlining our CI/CD pipeline enabled us to release updates easily and ensured a well polished game throughout the whole development.

Conclusion

Abrakajumpa project was a project where I led a team, managed complex workflows, prioritized user experience with minimal technical constraints. A fun, engaging and resonant game was delivered through clear communication, rapid iteration, and user centered design.

Reflection: As part of this project, we learned the value of leadership, effective team coordination, and iterative design towards producing a robust game. Because of that, moving forward I will continue to practice these skills and put them to use in future projects in order to build even more engaging and user friendly experiences.