Company

Zapdot

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Link

Website

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Team Size

7 people

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Duration

June 2019 - Aug. 2019

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Contributions

- Wrote extensive documentation on all gameplay aspects for the 2D shoot-'em-up project

- Prototyped enemy designs within Unity using behavior trees in NodeCanvas

- Performed playtesting sessions at events to narrow down key design issues

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Description

Project Yoyo was a project started by Zapdot in June of 2019. The game is a top-down shoot-'em-up that uses the same shoot-and-recall mechanics seen in tri.Attack();, a solo project developed by myself. I was hired as a game design intern at the company for the summer of 2019. Project Yoyo is based off of tri.Attack(); after Zapdot's CEO saw the game while I was showcasing it, bringing me in as an intern to start it as a new project.

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Working on Project Yoyo involved my first experience of working at a game company within work hours. A large majority of my work at Zapdot involved extensive design documentation for Project Yoyo. My documentation covered on all aspects of gameplay including movement, player weaponry, level design, and in-game progression. The documentation was intended for people from other roles in the team to understand the goals of the project, as well as a way for me to communicate what I needed to be able to adjust within the project. The latter also led into me prototyping several different types of enemies for the player to face within the Unity project, as behavior trees were implemented for me to use with customized variables. This was a great way for design work to be more efficient and led to a grand increase in gameplay content in the prototyping stage.

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Being with Zapdot and working on Project Yoyo was a unique experience as it was the first time they had brought someone in as an intern. I encouraged myself to live up to high expectations for them, while allowing myself to learn more about the game development process. Learning how to properly write documents to make them readable for other people, knowing how to break down mechanics where I could change the variables of every little thing, and communicating between other roles within my team were just some of many skills I learned while working with Project Yoyo.

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Project Yoyo is currently within pre-production.