Pandemic
Summary
Pandemic is a 2D action platformer with a unique Hookstaff movement mechanic and frame by frame animated characters. It takes place in an Italian coastal city
overun by an all consuming plague. The main focus of the game is exploration and traversal of large interconnected levels, with combat adding variety to the journey.
The game was created as the fourth semester Project Phase at the MD.H Munich using Unity. Afterwards it has seen a few Improvements via Bug Fixes, Level polish and the addition of some environmental assets.
Team Members:
Game & Level Design / Lead - Daniel Probst
Art Lead / Character - Katharina Franz
Programming Lead - Frederic Fulghum
Programming - Philipp Glas
Level Design - Yannick Arndt
Tech Art - Alex Kuth
Enemy Art & Environment - Verena Geilfus
Environment Art - Florian Mazreku
Environment Art - Thora Waldmann
Environment Art - Michelle Sonntag
Environment Art - Klara Kisa Porseng
Personal Role
My Personal Involvement in this Project was primarily as a Producer, Game & Level Designer.
With the picture to the right giving a
good feeling for my mindset during the project.
As a Producer this was the biggest team I worked with so far at the time, with members from different semesters. Organizing it proved to be quite a challenge.
We went through multiple approaches to find a structure that worked for the team and project throughout development, and learned much trough each of these iterations.
My main takeaway has been that enforcing a consisten use of task tracking systems tends to be more important than the details of the system itself.
As Game Designer my main responsbility was advancing the game from a simple concept, to a fleshed out Game Design and then iterating upon that during the project as things
developed. One core challenge was finding the time and energy to work though concepts before the project phase itself, as other univercity assignments vied for attention.
During development a constant balance was needed to keep iteration smart and directed, despite the day to day busywork of organsiation.
Parts of the Design work where done in collaboration with Yannick Arndt and included discussions with other team members like Philipp Glas and Frederic
Fulghum.
My role as Game Designer also contained Quality Assurance work, both through testing the game during development myself as I created content for it, but also by preparing,
holding and evaluting multiple play tests. I took special care here, so see how the game was shaping up and which aspects would need further adjustments or could be kept.
Pandemic - Play Tests and Results
As a Level Designer I designed the level and overarching map concepts together with Yannick Arndt, gave feedback to blockous and filled in Art assets and much of the game logic later on. While doing so, I also spend some of my time modifying and improving the levels as I went.
Additionally, as the Art team reported the setup of a Tileset to be more complicated than at first expected, I setup a rather simple one myself in order to have ground and walls to buiild my level with. I learned quite a bit about Unity and it's features on this journey.
