Lessons Learned

Now that our first game is released, there are some lessons I’ve taken away from the production process, to take onward to the next.

First: Development Delays

There will always be delays to development, most of them uncontrollable. As a producer I planned out weekly sprints, the overall scope of the project, MVP’s (minimum viable product), deadlines, scaling back etc. This is vital, but at the end of the day, there will be the unexpected popping up; from game related things like, bugs that take longer to fix than anticipated, mechanics or assets that needing changing or upgrading. Then there’s always the non-production side of life like, family, sickness, holidays, vets, plumbing and flooding issues… fun times.

Second: Feature Creep

Another very common thing in any games production. Adding new features to game-play, changing old ones and re-scoping. For Usagi Sekai - Bunny Shaman, I think we managed our feature creep well. We managed to add in extra features which really added a lot to the game, (e.g. battle log and almanac among them) but we were able to say no when ideas got too big in time and effort. It’s still nice talking about what else we could have added, then putting it aside and being happy with what already exist.

Third: Overwork

It’s hard not to overwork as this game was more of a side project, so we both crunched a lot during the end of production to finish it off. I never, ever want to do that again. It’s nothing anyone in any capacity should do, and I’m going to try my hardest to schedule maximum work hours per day, and re-scope projects accordingly to prevent any burn out. I’d rather delay the next release date than crunch again!

Fourth: Have fun

It’s so important to enjoy yourself while working so hard on something. If it’s not fun and rewarding, it’s not worth doing. Yes, I’m glad this game is finally done with, but I also absolutely love it!

Now it’s onward and upwards!

ハンナ