History

I never participated in being part of a group making games, without any financial incentive. So, when I saw an artist with a good art searching for a team in a discord server. I approach him and ask if there is a game he wants to make. I gave him the leadership position because I want to try something new. Usually, I commission artist and give precise instruction on what to do. This time, I have him share his ideas with me and make a game design doc on his own. We decided that we want to make something playable in 2 weeks.

Working Together

It was his first time making a game design doc. It also seems to be his first time being in a charge of a project and it shows. The game design doc is over ambitious. It is riddles with art assets and game mechanics that can't possibly be made in 2 weeks. The system he described is also complicated and hard to understand. It seems that he equates complexity to quality. If a programmer (me) has a difficulty understanding your game mechanics, I don't think players will want to bother learning about the game mechanics. Last but not least, the game design document is littered with complex vocabularies that he assumes I would also understand. No, I can't read your goddamn mind. 

We spend the first few days revising the game design doc until I reached a point where I say, "this is good enough". When I say that, I mean I still don't understand half of the game design doc, but I will improvise. Is the mechanics wrong?  Blame your confusing game dev document, goddamnit.

Approaching our first week, it seems that he managed to recruit a writer and a musician who want to be part of the project. Usually, I will take the initiative to ask them their role in the project and instruct them the exact deliverables that we need. Not this time. I want to see how my artist will lead the group, while I focus on developing our prototype, which I published on the first week.

Our prototype is a computer screen in which we play cards to make people docile. I see it as a political commentary of how government keep its citizens on a leash. The prototype is playable on browser and features playing cards from your hand directly onto the monitor, with placeholder assets directly taken from the internet. My teammates tested it, praised and it makes me feel good.

Reflection

The artistic asset is still being worked on, but I managed to finish another prototype, which gives me another confidence to push through my main project, Azeline. I also learned about making a functional card game mechanics in Godot, as well as prototyping an MVP quickly, which would be useful for my own projects.