video game experience

Just Dance is a unique experience in the cosmos of video games  melting dancing and good vibes. The player is invited to revisit famous pop culture songs spiced up with various choreographies he/she has to reproduce in rythm.

What are my missions?

• Support the artistic outsourcing team of Shanghai in collaboration with another producer.
• French government subvention document creation and submission. (CNC)
• Various production tools mission management
• Game feature scoping, tracking and schedule
• Support of the core team planning

What is my experience at Just Dance?

- Fusion of  Dance + video game + engage artistic direction = all I love!

- Despit the really tied time-constrains, the good vibes of the game are transmitted into the production : the motivation, the talent and the support of the team members toward each other is really insane. To be honest, I've never seen that before.

-  Learned how a AAA game is funded, organised and shipped in a corporation like Ubisoft. It needs a lot of discipline and responsive creative processes to ship a game with new features and challenges every year.

Echo of the sky is a rythmic puzzle platformer where Saira, the heroine is singing to transform the environment around her. The action takes place in a Indian Fantaisy world where Saira follow the verses of a poem to go to adventure to find her true self.

What challenge did we faced?

- Coordinate a team of 10 persons during a time frame of 5 months passing through all the stage of a game production : technological research,game concept, preproduction, production and polishing.

- Create a vertical slice of a game for a session of 15 minute with a  completed gameplay and a coherant story narration.

- Submit a CNC file by the end of the project to gather some sponsor from the government 

- Transmit a solid ergonomic feel good experience through the game design, the sound design and graphical design while respecting the Indian culture.

How did we overcome them?

- To support our AGILE method of production, we are using software such as Notion, Excel and discord to coordinate our work pipeline, organize and communicate to the administration our backlog, assign and follow task progression and have some human and informal communication. We used perforce as a version control software to support our Unreal project.

 - Use of external middle ware such as speed tree, substance designer and Wwise to save production time and improve the overall quality of the experience.

- We contacted Indian voices performers through Fiverr to be able to assign some true Indian accent to our character in the game. We did a remote casting followed by a direction of the actress to be able to have a character design as close as possible of our artistic intention. In addition, we asked about local Indian people to give us some feedback about our game.

Party couch game in honor of the good old time !

Death Stare is a first-person shooter couch game without weapons where 4 players can fight each other with the raw strength of their stare in a Mexican standoff style .

A game realized 90% in remote because of the lockdown restriction. It was a challenge humanly where we implemented a continuous integration and some internal tests in order to succeed.

What challenge did we faced ?

- Doing a party game during a full-lock down

- Psychological pressure due to the isolation

- Time constrain : 4 months to realized a well balanced shooter 

- Learning from each others while keeping the production at a decent rate

How did we overcome them ?

- Using Parsec to test remotely the game between us and the playtesters. We were testing the game two times a week as a team to be sure that the game feel we were looking for was there.

- Respect each other space when it was needed, took care to avoid tunnel focusing in the work and enjoy the human contact video games can create between people. ( thank you League Of Legends and Rocket league)

- Implemented a continuous integration process explained in a insightful GDC video to be able to focus our effort where it mattered the most !

- Switched between a AGILE method and a waterfall one depending the game feature we were implementing.

We were all found of dark humor and battle so we mixed them up in one game ! 

FateSmith is a point and click humoristic experience where you play a black-smith helping soldiers to solve personal problems in order for them to survive on the battlefield.

One of the most successful game jam I realized in 48 hours where every member kept a decent sleep and work schedule.

What challenge did we faced ?

- Group of 10 members : short time to understand each others ways and preferences

- Unite gameplay and narration with few tools and time

- Keep a classic sleep schedule and only work during the 10 a.m.- 11:30 p.m time frame.

How did we overcome them ?

- Round table at the beginning of the jam with a small presentation of every member to know what they like to do, how they see the game and how they think they can contribute the most to the game.

- Work repartition since the beginning, mock-up of the game for the whole group to have a clear idea of the objective. Focus on the bottle neck of the production (programming)   .

- Produced a prototype ASAP, identifying how much time every task took to produce it then scoped the game to be doable for the remaining hours while keeping the same pace of production.

The Island is a horror scene where the player is dropped on a mysterious land where he is supposed to survive until the inevitable ...

Personal work around a horror game to understand the Unity motor. Learned the basics of graph/sound design and Game design pipelines. 

What challenge did I faced ?

- Use the store asset to create a horror experience including game design ,music, sound design and graphical design.

- Code in C# and use the Unity motor features in order to realize my intention.

- Getting in touch with the interdependencies of the different specialties involved in video game production. 

How did I overcome them ?

- Looking for assets corresponding to my intention in the store.

- Write down the pitch and projecting myself in the game as a player and as a designer.

- Watch a lot of tutorials in order to achieve the technical and design challenge I planned. 

- Asked for help to the other student from the other specialties in order to get the good practices they already used in their previous projects.