Blossom is a cozy collect-a-thon with a bee player character.
This Custom Engine project had me in my first lead designer role. Aside from doing almost all the game design tasks listed below, I helped maintain creative cohesion between design and the rest of the team, and managed the scope of the game over the course of development.
My Responsibilities:
- The game concept
- The character’s movement
- The character controller and camera design
- Most of the sound effects, & picked out the music
- Concepting & iterating on the UI
- Most of the playtesting
- The trailer
- Ensure the team’s creative cohesion from the design front
- Presented our progress and scope to our stakeholders in biweekly lead presentations.
Student game for Year 2 At Breda University of Applied Sciences.
Contributions
Feature Specs
I delivered feature spec documents for all the game objects including Player, Flowers, Hives and POI’s. As they are meant to be used in technical implementation by programmers, I was in close communication with them regarding what details they would need and what exposed variables I would need.
Core Loop
I was responsible for making the core loop. I decided on a simple one of gathering flowers, and delivering the pollen at a central hive. This would be repeated over different Points of Interests such as a chapel or large tree.
It’s simplicity was vital in not overscoping our custom engine project, while rewarding their curiosity with the stunning visuals of the engine (which was its USP).
UI Design
Working together with our team’s artists, I designed and iterated on UI elements, and once again delivered feature specs for the programmers to implement. I am very comfortable working multidisciplinary, having some experience with both programming and drawing, and that shared language was vital to bringing assets into the game.
Iteration
After running playtests, I created Iteration Plans that would inform team efforts in following sprints. I prioritized improvement points based on project goals of keeping a narrow but pleasing experience.
The Trailer
Reception
Our game was enjoyed by players online and during BUAS’s Play day. A majority of players came away enjoying the simple core, lush graphics and gentle music, although there were players who struggled with controls and some performance issues, which would have been solved given another week.
BUAS Playday
Itch.io analytics (taken late 2024)
Takeaways
In the end, we didn’t overscope thanks to me and my team’s commitment to keeping things simple, and we delivered a functional game that delivered on our project goals of creating a relaxing bee flying game.
Being on a team as the only designer was tough but rewarding. I managed to do an enormous amount of work within the timeframe, but if I could do it again, I would delegate some of that work to fine-tune the core systems, as I now appreciate how long it takes to perfect a unconventional control scheme.
I really enjoyed my time working on this team, and I know now I can take on larger roles in a team and still manage.