Had you told me during high school that I would one day be publishing a game onto Steam for the general public to play and enjoy, I wouldn't have believed you. And had you told me that I would also be the Lead Designer on said game then I would have called you crazy. The fact that I am in this position and currently only a little over a week away from publishing Overgrown is a bit hard to take in, it almost doesn't feel real. But before I get ahead of myself, let me give you a brief description of exactly what Overgrown is.
Overgrown is a fast-paced resource management game in which you have to keep a multitude of houseplants alive. Play increasingly difficult levels until you become a master gardener capable of anything your precious plants require. Test your strategy and fast feet against unique obstacles such as temperamental cats, voracious swarms of bugs, and your home's clutter in order to keep the plants in your care happy and healthy.
Overgrown was created in Unreal Engine 4 for Windows PC and Mac. It was created by a team of 10 people:
Ian Kehoe - Lead Producer/Product Owner
Ariana Cook - Lead Designer
Ryan Swanson - Level Designer
Faith Scarborough - Lead Artist
Tessa Nelson - Environment Artist
Adam Dionne - Character Artist
Hannah Mata - UI/2D Artist
Simon Steele - Lead Programmer
Adam Clarke - Tools/Systems Programmer
Jason Gold - Systems Programmer
The past two semesters working on Overgrown have gone by so quickly that it's hard to take in the fact that it's almost over. We've had both ups and downs along the way, but overall the development of Overgrown has gone by extremely smoothly and I'm sad it's coming to an end. This project has been so much fun to work on and I deeply enjoyed the process of creating this game from complete start to finish. All of our hard work for these past months is finally coming together and I'm excited to get to release my very first game to the public, especially on such a big platform as Steam.
Here I will discuss all of the ups and downs that both I and my team have experienced throughout our development, and how I have personally grown as a professional in the game field.
Growing - The Good Parts
One of the first things that initially went well with our development this semester was onboarding. During the first semester of development on Overgrown, our team consisted of only five people, myself, Ian Kehoe, Simon Steele, Faith Scarborough, and Tessa Nelson. We did a little less than one semester's worth of work on Overgrown before onboarding began and we were able to assemble an even larger team to work on Overgrown. Before the onboarding process even began we had the task of deciding who we wanted to add to our team and whether it would be possible to acquire these people before other game teams picked them up. We came up with a list of people who we wanted to join our team and then crossed our fingers that we would get them, and thankfully, we ended up with everyone we initially wanted and then some. Our biggest priority was artists; due to the large number of levels and content we wanted to create, we knew we would need a large team of artists to make it possible. We made a priority list of artists we wanted to recruit and when the time came, thankfully, we were the first team to pick each of these people and were able to acquire all the artists we wanted. When it came to programmers it was a slightly different story. Initially, we didn't even think we would need any additional programmers, however, due to the large number of programming students and a relatively small number of games, each game team needed to recruit a minimum number of programmers in order for everyone to be on a team. This resulted in us being given two additional programmers which we didn't expect to have. At first, we weren't sure whether we would even have enough programming work for 3 people to do all semester, however, this ended up being perfect for us and I am now thankful for the extra programmers which we didn't realize we would need.
After acquiring all these wonderful new team members it was then time for the onboarding process. I've done onboarding before but it has been on smaller teams and also smaller projects. Thankfully our onboarding process all went very smoothly with only a few small hiccups here and there. All our new team members have been wonderful to work with and we all got along well for the entire project. I have heard some other developers from different teams talk about issues they were having with one or multiple team members, but with Tiny Moose Studio, this wasn't an issue. Everyone got along well, we had no personal conflicts, and the team as a whole just meshed together very nicely. After the first few weeks of getting to know each other, we really put our noses to the grindstone and got down to business. I am very happy and grateful for the team we ended up getting this semester and I don't think I would have changed any of our members.
Another one of the great things that happened during this semester of development is the outcome and final product of Overgrown. From the very beginning, we have had a very clear vision of what we wanted Overgrown to be and what type of gameplay we wanted to create. I wouldn't have been surprised if we had run into a few setbacks or changes along the way, but somehow this never happened. The development process went almost exactly as we had envisioned and the final product of our game is what I had expected it to be from the beginning. We didn't have to make any major changes, cut large amounts of content, change any main mechanics, or run out of time at the end. Somehow everything just seemed to work out in our favor and all of the main goals we had envisioned for Overgrown came to be. We even had the time at the end of the semester to work on bug fixing and polish changes which we might not have been able to do had things not gone so well. I believe that we are very lucky our development went as smoothly as it did and it honestly is better than I was expecting. When you go into a large project such as this with a large team you expect there to be some issues that come up along the way or sacrifices you have to make. But somehow this just never happened and I'm so happy and grateful it went as smoothly as it did. I imagine that this is pretty rare and I definitely am not going to expect all of my future projects to go as smoothly as this one, but instead, I'll just be thankful now that this one did go so well and be proud of myself and my team for what we accomplished.
As far as things going well for myself personally, one of the biggest things that I am proud of is all the things I have learned about the Unreal Engine during this project. Going into Overgrown I had never even touched Unreal before and so I had no idea how the engine worked or how to do anything within it. Through working on Overgrown I have learned so much about Unreal Engine 4 and I feel pretty confident in my abilities to use the engine now. I am very proud to be able to say I am now experienced in both Unreal Engine 4 and Unity, which will really help me in my future career as a professional in the game field. Looking for jobs with experience in both engines will likely be a big help and set me apart from other applicants who might only be experienced in one or the other engine, or even neither. I've very glad we ended up choosing Unreal for this project, even though it did provide some challenges for me in terms of working on the project, in the end I was able to do a lot of research and learning and it has ultimately helped me to become a better and more experienced professional. This learning process also gave me the confidence to not be afraid of going into a project with an engine or program I am unfamiliar with. If I'm in this situation again of being unfamiliar with something I can look back on this project and feel confident in myself to be able to quickly learn and adapt to new software and ultimately overcome that challenge.
The last thing I'll discuss here about what went well on our project was my comfortability with our team. I am generally a very quiet and reserved person, I usually don't speak up very often as I feel like I don't have anything useful to say or my ideas aren't very good. I personally struggle with imposter syndrome which definitely has an impact on my overall confidence and ability to speak up. However, throughout this semester I have become very comfortable with my team and it has helped me to not be so intimidated when it comes to speaking up and voicing my opinions. This is something I still do struggle with and likely will be for a long time, maybe even my whole life. But still, I really loved working with this team and I'm proud of myself for becoming close enough with everyone to feel more confident in myself. I personally got along well with each of our team members and that was a huge help with feeling more confident.
Wilting - The Bad Parts
While development on Overgrown did go very smoothly, we did still have a few issues come up which is to be expected on any project. One of our biggest issues which we struggled with throughout this whole semester was our audio composer. Because there are not many students at Champlain College with audio experience it is really difficult to get your hands on one. You could likely count the number of students with audio experience on one hand to give you a better idea. Because of this shortage, Champlain was able to work together with the Berklee College of Music to recruit some of their students to help us on our projects. We were interested in this as we knew we wanted to have our own music and sound effects if possible, and so we were assigned Sander Tolner, a Berklee student, to compose all of our audio for us. At first it seemed like this process was going to go very smoothly, he had agreed on a certain number of hours of work each week he would do which we were happy with and we got along well with him. However, as the weeks went on we started to see that his work wasn't being completed as quickly as we had hoped. It seemed like he wasn't working as many hours per week as he had initially agreed upon and so the process of finishing audio assets was very slow. To make matters worse, we ran into some communication issues with him which even further slowed down the development of our audio. Our main form of communication with him was through emails but he was not very quick to respond, and when he did we did not get very clear communication from him about the work being done. Overall our experience working with Sander wasn't the best, however it was still better than having no audio composer at all. We did end up receiving most if not all of the audio assets we wanted, it just took a lot longer than we anticipated and some of them weren't quite up to the quality we had been hoping for.
While I have already talked about how well our team got along and how happy I was with each of our team members, there was one single team member we had a bit of trouble with throughout the semester. One of our programmers showed to us very quickly that he wasn't as devoted to the project as everyone else and his work on the project was sub-par. When he was assigned a task in-engine he would work on it but his work was very slow, and more often than I'd like he would be unable to do what he had been tasked with, often resulting in another programmer needing to step in and fix/finish the work for him. When our other programmers and our producer stepped in to try and talk to him and find out what the problem was, he would always say that everything was fine and that he enjoyed working on the project. It soon became apparent that this wasn't true, however, as we ended up hearing from an outside source that this individual had been complaining to others about not enjoying the project or the work, but he wouldn't tell that to us and instead claimed everything was fine when we asked him. While this was a bit frustrating, in the end it didn't put us behind on too much work. Like I have mentioned previously, we initially didn't even think we would need another programmer, let alone two more. So considering the fact that we already had more programmers than we anticipated, this lack of communication/motivation didn't have too bad of an impact on our game and we were still able to produce all the systems we intended.
One issue which was pretty consistent with not only the members on my team but seemingly most students at Champlain was burnout. Due to the strange circumstance the world is currently in with Covid-19, students who are living on campus have very strict rules we have to follow in order to stay safe and prevent the virus from spreading around the college. Because of this, we ended up having a very weird and essentially non-existent spring break during this semester. We usually would get one full week off during the spring to just take a break and recharge from all the work we have been doing each week. However, Champlain changed the way our spring break worked this semester, and instead of a full week off it was not much of a break at all. Instead of having no classes or homework assigned for this week, teachers were instructed to "go easy" on their students during this week, mainly meaning to assign us less work and even cancel class if the professor decided. However, this was all up to each individual professor to decide how they wanted to handle it, which resulted in some people hardly even getting a break at all. There were still classes to go to and still homework to be done during this break, and so this caused all of us Champlain students to have to work consistently through the entire semester without any proper break. This definitely had a negative impact on me personally and caused me to have some pretty intense burnout towards the end of the semester. Other members of my team also felt this way and we even discussed it during some of our meetings. The only thing we could do is just push through and persevere until the end of the semester, but it was mentally taxing for everyone. This was more so an issue of how Champlain handled the spring break and not something we did wrong, but it was still an issue we all faced and so I wanted to discuss it here.
Finally, something which did go wrong for me personally was my role as Lead Designer on Overgrown. This was my first time being a proper lead on a team and I haven't had much if any experience being in charge like this before. Like I said before, by nature I am a quiet and reserved person. Along with this I am also not very good at leading others and would much rather be a follower. This provided some challenges for myself and somewhat for the team with me being the Lead Designer on the project. Halfway through the semester, and again at the end, our whole team did a team evaluation in which we each personally evaluated each other and spoke about each other's strengths and weaknesses. During this evaluation, many other members of the team commented on my abilities as a lead and the fact that I wasn't fully living up to the title. I didn't always step up and take charge like a lead should, I often let others do the talking for me, and I just wasn't confident enough in myself to be someone for others to go to for guidance. This didn't have any detrimental effects on the team or the project, but it was still an issue I was facing throughout the semester and trying my hardest to overcome. I am ultimately glad that I was the lead designer on Overgrown and it was a very good learning experience, but it is not something I would enjoy doing again in the future as being in charge of others is simply just not for me.
Blooming - How I've Grown
To finish this postmortem reflection off I am going to discuss some ways in which I believe I have grown as a professional, and also some things I have learned about myself during this project. The first thing I will go over is my confidence and ability to speak up. Like I've already said, I sometimes struggle with my confidence and my ability to speak my opinions on a topic. This is an issue I've already been battling for my entire life and is something I will continue to work on for years to come. I am ready and willing to continue improving and becoming more confident and outspoken, but this type of thing simply takes time and experience. Working on Overgrown and being a lead definitely helped me with this and I can see some improvement in myself compared to the beginning of this semester. One example I can give is my ability to joke around and be light-hearted during our team meetings, something I would not be able to do if I was uncomfortable with myself or my team members. Meeting with the whole team every week definitely helped me with getting used to the team and also becoming more comfortable with myself. I am ultimately proud of myself for where I am now and I strive to continue working on this issue after graduation, as every year and with every new project I am able to improve.
Another thing that has really helped me grow as a professional is working on such a large team. Working with a team of 10 people has helped me to learn and experience what it is like to have good communication with many people at once and from multiple disciplines. I already knew how important communication with your team was, but this experience allowed me to put that knowledge to the test and see just how well I could communicate with everyone. I believe my communication with the rest of the team was really strong and I definitely tried my best to keep everyone constantly updated and also respond to any questions others had for me. Throughout this semester I spoke to the team every single day through daily updates and reminders which really helped us to stay on track and know what everyone on the team was working on. I think our team communication as a whole was really strong and this will definitely help me in the future when looking for a career in the game field as I will likely be more qualified than some other applicants when it comes to my level of communication skills.
One thing that I've recently learned about myself through working on Overgrown is what I do and don't enjoy about game design as a whole. While I do enjoy more traditional design work such as writing documentation and designing systems/mechanics, I found that what I love more than that is working directly in-engine with the project and implementing small systems or features myself. I deeply enjoy getting my hands dirty in the project and implementing/tweaking systems in addition to my other design tasks. I now know that I would likely be a really good fit for some kind of designer/programmer hybrid job in which I am doing design work while also implementing features into the project directly and doing some small/medium programmer tasks. During my job search thus far I have seen at least one job listing for a position like this and I will continue to look for more of these types of positions as I feel that is where I would fit best and my diverse skills could be fully taken advantage of.
Finally, to bring up the discussion of my lead position again, I have learned that taking on a leadership role just isn't meant for me. While I did a decent job of it on this project, it is not something that I enjoy and I won't be looking for any leadership roles during my job search. I am much happier being in a position where someone else is in charge of me instead of the other way around and I am completely fine with that. I am glad I had this experience as a lead designer so I could learn this about myself and I can now make informed decisions about my future career knowing where my strengths and weaknesses lie.
The End Of A Great Project
To wrap up everything I've said in this postmortem, working on Overgrown has been an amazing experience and I am so proud of not only myself but my team for all we have accomplished. We created something really special and this is not an experience I will soon forget. We had our own ups and downs as will any project, but I wouldn't change a thing. This team has been amazing to work with and our final project is something I believe we are all very proud of. This whole experience has helped me to become an even stronger professional in the game field and I am confident the skills I have learned over this past year will help me to ultimately find a great job after graduation. Overgrown will be releasing on Steam on May 14th, just a little over a week from when I am writing this. I hope that anyone reading this will check out our game and enjoy Overgrown!
