top of page
GameLogo.png
Nebelkamf Gameplay
Video afspelen

Project Details

Position

Gameplay Designer

Associate Producer

Time frame

May 2017 - June 2017

Team size

16

Engine

Hex Engine (Custom engine)

Short brief

"Create a game using one of the custom engines created by the programming department. In my case, I joined with the hex team, 8 programmers who created an engine specifically for hexagon grid-based games."

Software used

Description

Nebelkampf is a turn-based strategy game, taking inspiration from chess and battleships. Players have access to a wide range of different units, that fight it out on a board covered in the fog of war. Each unit comes with its own "vision" & combat abilities.

Game Design

Responsibilities

  • Design & paper-prototype gameplay mechanics

  • Playtest together with other designers to test, and iterate the game constantly

  • Work together with other designers on the units

Challenges

  • Design for counter units, or support units were cut due to scope.
    We had to make every unit equally viable and unique, which was hard to convey their strengths to new players.

  • The engine was still being developed as we made this game. The gameplay could only be implemented half way through the project. We had to paper prototype our game for the majority of the project.

  • Fmod

  • Audacity

  • PivotalTracker

  • Visual Studio (for LUA scripting)

Capture.PNG

Paper Prototyping

"The engine was still being developed as we made this game. The gameplay could only be implemented half way through the project. We had to paper prototype our game for the majority of the project.
Even after the tech team had the engine in a solid state, we would still mostly test it on paper, as it was proven to be a lot faster. We played and iterated for about 4 hours a day."

prototype.png

Strategy Game Design

"We didn't know at first what kind of game we wanted to create. It started like chess, but with limited vision. We were still setting the game rules, win conditions, and randomness. After a month we were still iterating the game's rules, but we ended up with something solid that satisfied our stakeholders."

units.png

Unit Design

"The units we designed were initially added for variety and uniqueness in the game. Later, they were balanced to be equally viable, but still countering, and supporting other units. The design of these units were iterated upon constantly. Small tweaks or changes to, for instance the map size, had big impact on the balance of these units."

Audio

Responsibilities

  • Work on all audio together with another designer

  • Design & create audio assets​

  • Edit audio assets

  • Implement audio using Fmod & LUA

audacity.png
fmod.png

Sound Design

"I picked up audio & VFX with another designer in the last few weeks of the project. Most design was already final at this time, so I could shift my focus from the game to the effects and feedback.
I edited the sounds in Audacity, and imported to the game through FMOD."

VFX

Responsibilities

  • Work on all vfx together with another designer, didn't have an artist available for this.

  • Design & create particles, and particle images

  • Implement vfx using our custom engine, while programmers expand the functionality to our desire

  • Trigger vfx through LUA scripting

poof.gif
ghost.gif
fireflies.gif
particleditor.png
particleditor2.png

Achievements

  • Finished a game within a custom engine. This gave me more insight on what other game studios might have, and that the tech team could make features based on the projects need

  • Learning to work around with limitations within a custom engine, like transform tools missing.

  • Increased my leadership skills, I never led a team of a size this big. Meetings were time-boxed, and straight to the point.

  • Managed to create a strategy game that people loved, and had little to no dominant strategy

Associate Producer & Scrum Master

Responsibilities

  • Manage deliverables, delegate tasks within feature teams. This counts for both the game team, and engine team

  • Facilitate Scrum, and host daily stand-ups

  • Host sprint planning, and planning poker sessions

  • Manage team communication & information flow

Challenges

  • Managing 2 teams, people who work on the engine, and people who work on the game.

    • Since I had insufficient expertise of their work. 
      I delegated some production tasks to the tech lead, who was more knowledgeable in his area

  • First time I worked with 2 separate teams, it was a necessity to come up with a good structure and pipelines

  • Manage time between production related tasks, and content related task

bottom of page