Game Producer Portfolio: Emanuele Ardolino

General information

Development information

ENGINE

UNREAL 4

NUMBER OF PLAYERS

SINGLE PLAYER

GENRE

PLATFORMER

PROJECT DURATION

~ 8 WEEKS

PLATFORM

PC

TEAM SIZE

5 DESIGNERS - 4 PROGRAMMERS - 5 ARTISTS

Game Summary

Super Circus Fruit Show is a chaotic fun platformer about a little Papaya mime trying to escape from the Circus.

All the circus performers have been turned into fruits by the evil ringmaster and are forced through gauntlets to entertain the crowd.

Tilt the level and make the performers struggle. Experience wacky physics, tumbling through obstacle courses with variable hazards in order to get the highest score!

Key Features

Interact and feel the game objects. The character react to forces, momentum, and gravity, creating dynamic and unpredictable scenarios.
Take control of the environment instead of the character. With intuitive motion controls, you can manipulate the stage, tilting it to guide your character, avoid obstacles, and uncover hidden paths.
Play as a juicy fruit, but be careful because you might end up cut! Beware, the world is filled with perilous obstacles, and one wrong move could leave you sliced and diced! Stay sharp, stay juicy, and emerge triumphant in this fruity escapade!

Role and Responsibilities

My responsibilities as Producer:

Pitching the concept and represent the team in the presentations.
Create and own the product backlog and keep track of progress throughout Sprints.
Managing the scope and maintain a clear vision for the team.
Defining project structure and team organization.
Introduce basic Scrum and Agile methodologies to my team mates.
Organizing and facilitating Scrum Events.
Maintaining a Risk Log.

My responsibilities as Game Designer:

Setup of game design pillars.
Designing the gameplay experience and core loop.
Playtesting and iterate based on feedback.
Communicating with other disciplines to define and improve the pipeline.
Create a level from sketches to whitebox in Unreal, ready to be set dressed by the artists.

Analysis

This was my first project with such a large team. The beginning was chaotic because I had no knowledge of the different pipelines. Dialogue and collaboration were essential to better understand how to proceed.

About design, it was very helpful to define pillars and a core loop from the beginning to improve everyone's understanding and develop consensus. It was also crucial to have a reference game - Super Monkey Ball - to evaluate the possible pros and cons during development.

As far as production is concerned, given my previous experience in project management, I was in charge of project and team management. I learnt a lot about constraints and dependencies between disciplines and consequently in pipeline development. I also facilitated the team members taking care of unexpected events and solving problems.

Among the most important challenges of this project:

First experience with Scrum - Most of the team was totally unaware of Agile methodologies so I spent some time to give some background knowledge through some documentation and got involved in driving scrum events as scrum master.
The use of a spline tool implemented in Houdini - The tool allowed us to realise the level very quickly, but the development of the tool itself represented a major risk that I monitored over time.
The game is physic based - Since the gameplay involves controlling the level instead of the character, we tried different solutions. Both for the sake of optimisation and the feedback received from playtesting, we opted for the “illusion“ of controlling the level. In fact, the player controls the character but the camera moves to the opposite side, thus the game feel is still effective.

Main Takeaways

Defining design pillars and a core loop from the start was beneficial in improving understanding and consensus among team members. Having a reference game, such as Super Monkey Ball, helped evaluate pros and cons during development.
Pitching the concept and representing the team in presentations showcases the project's vision, progress, and achievements to stakeholders and clients. It involves effectively communicating the project's value and goals.
Creating and owning the product backlog and tracking progress throughout sprints enables effective backlog management and ensures visibility into project milestones and deliverables.
Defining project structure and team organization through a team contract and communication pipeline helps establish clear roles, responsibilities, and expectations. It facilitates smooth collaboration and communication within the team.

Documents

Sprint Planning

To improve scope management, I created this document that summarizes the goals broken down for each sprint. In this way it was easier to calculate the ratio between scope and capacity and verify team speed during sprint reviews.

Risk Log

I created a Risk Log to highlight and monitor possible risks that could occur during the project. This document has proved to be essential for evaluating possible mitigation plans or contingency plans.