Safari Seekers

Explore the island, find the animals, learn English!

Overview:

Safari Seekers is a 3D open-world platformer, where players must find animals that fit the given properties in order to gain time. As the game progresses, more properties and mixtures of them appear, helping players which properties belong to which animal.

Safari Seekers is a project that was the result of the Applied Games course at Howest: Digital Arts and Entertainment. In the course, students are tasked to work with a client and help create a game that suits their needs.

In this case, the goal of the game was to help young students in Spanish schools learn English in a fun and exciting way.

Our project was composed of four members, myself included. We spent around 10 hours a week working on the game, for 12 weeks in total.

My Contributions:

  • Brainstorming and Game Design

  • UI Programming

  • Team Coordination and Management

  • Lead Communicator for clients and supervisors

General Info:

At the time, this project was the longest project I had dealt with. Over the course of 12 weeks, my group and I would have to develop a game from start to finish, from ideating to a complete final version.

Despite a rough prototyping phase, once the project got into production, the work went extremely smoothly. During this project, I mainly took the role of what I like to call an “initiator.” Usually, I would like to begin the work day by initiating conversations about what needed to be done or be the first to share my opinion of what needed to be done, from which a discussion would be born about how to properly proceed during the work day.

Outside of that role, my main work was with the UI programming for the game, as well as keeping in contact with our client and leading discussions with her or our supervisors.

Brainstorming and Prototyping:

As this was a game meant for a client, it was important to create a game that would meet her goals. In particular, she wished for a game that would teach young students in Spanish classrooms English in a fun and exciting way.

We had many topics we could choose from, such as the water cycle, the human body, animals, and so on. Eventually, after many rigorous brainstorming sessions between all of us, we all decided on an idea we liked, which was a game where you find animals.

During our prototyping phase, we fully fleshed out our game idea, but we also had to keep in mind the age range of our target audience. Since this was a game meant for young children who may have never played a game before, we had to change some elements of our game such that it would be more accessible to these children, such as no mouse control or only using simple words.

Thanks to considering these issues from the very start, we were able to create a game with very accessible controls for these children.

Production:

During the production of the game, I took the role of UI programmer for the game.

Over the course of the project, I fell in love with UI programming, especially thanks to one package called LeanTween. LeanTween made it very easy for me to create a better UI that gave players more feedback. Feedback for players was especially important, as it made the game more accessible and lively.

While I was mostly a UI programmer in this project, I did have a hand in coding some game mechanics that were related to the UI, such as the Timer and showing the player whether they selected the correct animal based on the given properties.

Communication:

One of the most important parts of this project was communication with our client. During production, we would give constant updates to our client about the state of our project and how progress was going. During these meetings, I would usually be the one talking to the client. Usually, I would answer most of her questions, but if it was a question I didn’t know the answer to, I would ask one of my teammates to answer the question.

Additionally, we also met with our project supervisors weekly. Similar to our client meetings, I would usually be the representative for the group, usually being the main person the supervisors would talk to during these meetings.

These experiences were helpful, as not only did I become better at communicating with others, but also a better team leader since it made me unconsciously think about the overall state of the project and how things were going.

Team Management:

As mentioned before, I usually found myself in a role I liked to call an “initiator.” During group meetings, I would usually be the first one to start a conversation, list out the problems we still needed to fix, and frequently ask how things were going with the other group members.

I don’t feel comfortable calling myself the “team leader,” as I feel that is egotistical of me. I strongly believe that everyone in the group was in their own way a team leader, as everyone in the group put their own input on what should be done for the day as well as tell others, myself included, about what should be done.

Regardless, I still learned a lot from this project, mainly about working with teams and coordinating with others to best achieve our goals. I also improved my leadership skills, as I often took charge during group meetings and listed out what we still had left to do and what should be done about it.

Documentation:

Similar to Your Descendants’ Descendants, Safari Seekers required a Game Design Document. While I did not fully write out the Game Design Document, I did contribute to it.

Seeing how other people write their Game Design Documents, as well as getting more experience in writing one, has helped me improve documentation.

Takeaways:

  • Better experience with working in a team and being a lead coordinator for the group

  • Utilizing Unity’s UI system and LeanTween package

  • Became better at communicating with a client and/or supervisor

  • Adjust game mechanics such that they appeal to a certain target audience

  • More confidence in working on larger projects