Introduction

This project was completed while studying at the institution of SAE Qantm. The project evolved choosing an aspect from a specific esports and make it into an analog game in the goal to teach the player that aspect so if they were to play the analog game than the esports game, they would have an understanding of how it works. The esports that we choose was Overwatch, and we went with the aspect of fast-paced gameplay using abilities to hinder your opponents gaining you an advantage. We made this concept into a card game.

What Went Right?

Playtesting

One of your major strengths in this project was playtesting. We were able to playtest almost 3 times a week. Each time we did, we were able to find new problems with our game and keep on trying to make it better. Not only that we were able to get multiple different groups playtesting giving us a wide range of opinions on what we can improve. We had game developers helping us with balancing issues and mechanical issues. We had friends and family help us to know what the game would look like if the public got a hold of it and what problems they faced being green to the game. Throughout the playtesting, we were able to have a deeper understanding of what aspects worked within our game and what aspects needed work.

Work Ethic

Throughout this project, the work ethic between the team was very good. There was a lot of work that needed to be down and we worked in a team to make sure that it got done. Even though we made a lot of work for ourselves screwing up, we still kept on top of everything rather than falling behind.

What Went Wrong?

Choosing an aspect of the game.

When making our game, we went through 3 different iterations of it. Each time we changed the majorly due to not pinpointing the aspected we wanted and stayed with that. Instead, we tried to add multiple aspects making the game not feel as though you could go from this game to playing overwatch and understand. This lead to items being late due to having to do them again and again because we changed our mind about the game and lost focus on what we wanted to tell. In the future, we can stop this by making sure we write down in detail what you are doing and why so we don’t lose track of our bearings.

Communication

One of the problems within the team was communication. Throughout this assignment, we worked on this project individually, we didn’t really talk about it outside of class except for leaving comments on the google doc. This lead to confusion when talking about our game to someone, due to the fact someone each time didn’t have all the new information which lead to disagreements and angry with the team. From this experience, I have learned that keeping communication with your team throughout the project is essential to keep all this from happening again. This could mean having a discord chat with just keeping everyone up to date.

Conclusion

Overall, I am very happy how this project ended out. We were able to learn a great many things about game design. I’ve never done an analog game before so doing something different made this experience feel fresh expanding my knowledge in game design.

Data Box

Game – Hanzo as Hanzo
Developer – Robert D'Antoni
Release Date – 19/07/2018
Platforms – Card Game
Game - (Itch.io) - https://robert-dantoni.itch.io/hanzo-as-hanzo  
Number of Developers – 3 (Student)Length of Development (4 Weeks)
Budget - $0
Development Tools – N/A
Code – N/A