Capstone Project

As part of my educational journey, I have undertaken a comprehensive Capstone Project that integrates knowledge and skills from multiple advanced courses in game design and development.

The Production and Planning course introduced me to the stages of the software development life cycle, developing my understanding of how projects evolve through these stages. I was presented with various production methodologies and gained experience with organizational and communication tools essential for project completion.

In the Game Design Preproduction course, I was assigned to a team of four members, including myself. We collaborated as we would in a professional game development environment to document and develop a gameplay prototype. This course taught us how to balance a demanding workload with multiple deliverables that had to be concurrently managed.

During the Game Systems Integration course, I worked with my team to take an existing, partially completed game and iterate on its development. We performed testing, improved existing mechanics, compared our project to relevant market counterparts, and conducted various tasks to advance the project to completion.

The Game Balancing course provided me with the skills to use level design and system design knowledge from previous courses to create and capitalize on the strengths of our designs for this Capstone Project. We learned how to communicate with players through user interfaces and when to finalize or cut features that were deprecated or not synergistic with the overall design direction.

In the Game Design V course, we combined the concepts behind the implementation of a game or interactive media project with market research. Working with my team, we implemented key features into a project and researched these features in existing games to better understand design nuances. By the end of this course, we could assess the validity of our project concerning our goals and market competition.

The Game Design VI course also served as the culminating checkpoint for my work in the program. We put the finishing touches on our digital project, preparing it for submission to festivals and for release to the general public. The course combined hands-on learning experiences with summative and formative portfolio assessments.

Throughout these courses, I worked with my team, Team Turnip Gun, to create a game called Merlin Madness. This project encapsulates the skills and knowledge I have acquired, demonstrating my readiness to contribute effectively to the game design and development industry.