Launch Box

The Game

Hold strong as you protect your ship from an invading imposter. Understand what tasks your crewmates are able to do and who they are as you attempt to ride you the damage; surviving the impending doom.

Team Development

The development of Launchbox is centered around an 8 person team of Unity Developers that have never released a game before. Each person were given a goal to work towards as developing the core gameplay and idea.

As the theme for the game jam was being randomized. The team planned in advanced on selective ideas for the games and mixed them together. Providing a basic premise of the game for everyone to understand.

What I Learned as a Lead Developer

I was selected as the Lead Developer for the team due to my experience level. Getting the experience to plan, maintain, and handle a team was a new learning experience. The collabloration of the team was effective through text chats and voice calls, as we added on additional ideas and syned them with the goal of the project. Unity Version Control is the collaboration tool being used. Handling all versions, file changes, and comparing changesets across multiple branches.

An issue brought upon the team, is the collaboration through branches. Team Members didn’t understand that they had to push branches after completing tasks and would also go days without responding to any other members or asking for help. Communication became the main component for delaying the process of developing the project and lowering the scope of the game.

How I solved this was by responding and asking more questions to collaborators and giving advice and guidance onto what can solve their issues. Scheduled calls for assistance and meetings were held at 2 different times, morning and afternoon, as we had multiple people from different time zones (spanning GMT-4 & GMT+4). I personally responced and asked questions directly to the members so give them support on their issues and solve problems they were having.

The communication issue caused the Gameplay Testing to be delayed until 2 days before the project’s deadline. Creating a strict scheduling for fixing bugs, merging branches, and connecting gameplay features. All tasks we’re completed before the ending deadline and updated; in the future, public playtest pointed towards more issues constisting of altered functions and gameplay. However, these bugs are no more as the game became officially released on launch.