Otters & Wizard Hats

Platform: PC with controller

Software used: Unreal Engine, Rider, Perforce, Miro (full release),

Unity, VS studio, Clip Studio Paint (prototype)

Project duration: 5 months (full release), 2 weeks (prototype)

Team Size: 6 (full release), 2 (prototype)

Role: Game Designer, Gameplay Programmer, Team Lead

Project Description

This started as a side project with a friend which I eventually ended up prototyping and proposed as a group projects in my school. Which got fully developed into a game by a group of 6 people.

"Made to be an easy to pick up replayable LAN game, otters and wizard hats revives coop couch multiplayer with a modern twist!

In the game, you are a group of up to four otters exploring the dungeon, along the way you find a variety of hats with different synergies and fight a horde of monsters to get to the final "golden hat of the ancient otter wizard", you'll find that sharing an all powerful hat in between your friends is rather difficult though..."

My role

I was mainly the team lead and game designer, I took responsibility, communicated and decided our priorities as well as trying to keep everybody happy. When I was not busy with this I was primarily acting as a programmer and assisting in the development in the game, most of the game's hats for example were done by me as well as the majority of the UI and all of the sound design. Outside of the pure development we also worked together with a composer that was outside of the team who I had to communicate with.

Game Design Document

One of the principle responsibilities of mine was to make and maintain documentation, the original design document can be found here. Though several features were slashed (due to the realities of life) so it is not representative of our current game but more a glimpse of what the end product could look like.

Though I was the main person responsible for this document my entire team contributed to it in their own ways, as well as the design of the whole game.

GDD_OttersAndWizardHats.pdf

The team working away at Otters & Wizard Hats,

From left to right sitting at the table, Mikail Kahya, Finian Horrie, Lander Van den Branden and Aušrinė (Ash) Valionytė.

not pictured: me (as I'm behind the camera), Karen Van Schaik (our composer)

History

The original premise was thought up by me after seeing a "Magic: The Gathering" card artwork depicting an otter mage flying on a broom. Me and a good friend Warre Adriaensen toyed around with the idea and I ended up developing a prototype working on LAN network. After that we both got busier with our lives and other projects so it took a back seat.

Later in the year they were taking up proposals for the coming group projects at my then college DAE, and after much mulling about I decided to take my old prototype and put it in a couch coop setting (as to put the project from a "whenever" position into a more realistic one). I pitched it together with our artists Ash and Lander and (highly likely due to Ash's talents in making art concepting the idea and with evocative imagery practically shooting the gameplay into your head) they decided to allow us to make it.

Get in touch at robbeheyde1@gmail.com to see my resume

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