With our team coming to the end of our vertical slice, we have developed a strong team dynamic with better communication amongst all majors. There are a ton of assets we all would love to implement within the game, but at this point, it is important to choose what can be polished well in order to help our game become well fleshed out.

Our team has had a lot of discussions amongst ourselves, professors, and Sony mentors. The best advice we received was to cut specific small details that aren’t required within the main gameplay loop. When we first were developing the gameplay of “Rouge-lite” we had wanted to implement short mini games that would allow the player to craft their own makeup. Since creating mini games would take a lot of time, it was more important for use to create assets for the main level, polish them, and best complete the first level, rather than focus on a bunch on small details within the game.

At first, these types of conversations were difficult to have because team members held onto their ideas of having certain aspects within the game. Once these issues were resolved, and our team fully discussed the main assets that needed to be implemented and the assets that weren’t as important, our team dynamic began to thrive. Instead of questioning others or being confused on what each member was supposed to do, now we have been more confident with all the members on the team. For us, deciding to finally work as a team, instead of arguing with each other, it has helped us to go farther on this game then we originally believed we could weeks ago when our team dynamic was broken.

What was important to us in making these decisions was to make these decisions as a team. Instead of having one person decide what was implemented into the game, we made sure to make all decisions as a team in order to help all members feel heard. We did decide, however, that if the team couldn’t decide on an aspect of the game after discussing it thoroughly, then our producer would make the final decision.

Making decisions on a game team can be challenging. This was something that our team definitely struggled with at the beginning and middle of creating this game. Even though our team has gone through a rough patch, we have been able to completely turn our team dynamic around and produce assets and ideas that we are proud of.