Game Development Process and Playtesting

Here was the task: create a 2D platformer game in Unity within 3 weeks.

At the beginning of the first week, we met up and brainstormed a theme and idea for the game. Inspired by Celeste and Kevin's pet dog, Coco, we decided that our game would be a parkour-esque platformer in which we would chase after Coco through all different city-based environments. The player will gain special abilities (dashing, wall climbing, and double jumping) as they progress, allowing them to overcome various and increasingly difficult obstacles that the city will present. 

After documenting the ideas and defining the different environments that each level will take place in, we split up our team to each work on one level. This meant that each of us will have to work on our own sprites for each level as well since each level is a different environment. Since we were a team of only three and there were four levels, each of us will work on the last level. We also divided the work up for developing shared mechanisms such as the abilities and the menus.

Whenever large changes were made (after pushing our changes to Git and merging it), we would update each other on Discord and receive feedback from each other.  Changes included anywhere from mechanism implementation to level design additions.

By the end of the second week, we had our game ready and built for beta testing. The first three levels as well as the basic mechanisms are more or less completed. During class, we had two other teams play and test our game, and we received valuable feedback from this process. Besides changing the player sprite and adding animation (it is currently a simple green box), we were encouraged to add more feedback for the player (so they know where to go in some parts of the level and be clear on what abilities they have obtained). These reviews will be taken into account for improving the game for the final release.