SIPBLOG: Just one more push! – 7/26/21

Making a game is no easy task, especially in such a short timespan as one summer. We here at Team Custard know this firsthand. All of us, Liam, Matt, Shirley, Jen, Cal, and both Brandons, have felt the crunch of such a short timeframe. We’ve had to constantly reassess where we’re at with our game, establish new deadlines, do our best to meet them, continue communication, and generally try to keep everything intact and as bug-free as possible. It has not been an easy balancing act, and one that has pushed us to our respective limits in many cases.

On a more positive note, our game is coming along well! From humble beginnings, House Haunters has flourished into a turn-based strategy game with multiple different special abilities to unlock and equip, different enemy types to fight with distinct behaviors, and lots of cute art and gorgeous music to take in! Our core gameplay loop has been nailed down for some weeks now, so we’ve had our heads down polishing as much as we can. It has not been easy, and we end up having to readjust as deadlines come and go and not everything we want has been ironed out (including this blog post). But we do our best, keep respect for one another, and soldier onward with determination to create the best game we can with the time remaining.

With the time we have left, we are sprinting through as many finishing touches as we can. Solving bugs, adding in last-minute artwork and pizzazz to our animations, and making the player feel as involved and invested as possible. With our deadline right around the corner, I can certainly say we’ve learned a lot from this whole experience. Managing scope, working through solutions as a team, and the difference between discussing something at length vs. launching into prototyping and testing have been the biggest teachable moments for our team over this summer.

MassDigi SIP has been such an eye-opening experience for all of us, and one I think many of us will remember vividly for years to come. The decisions we’ve had to make and skills we’ve had to master have accelerated us more as game developers than perhaps any experience in our past. From all of us at Team Custard, thank you for reading, and we’ll see you on the App Store!

-By Liam Cristello