The development process overall

We began this process by planning meticulously. Researching and sharing ideas (as you can see in our  Design Docs Post. After sketching out a level design and a storyboard we began to work in Unity beginning with the basic mechanics of the shifting camera and platform view the player experiences in 'beLEAF in yourself.' We took this blank canvas to our play test and got some really good  feedback that we used to move forward. AT this point we reprocessed the storyboard and focused heavily on the design aspect as well.

Focusing on the aesthetics was so important because the game view shifts from a 2d to a 3d perspective. Not only does this need to feel fluid, but there was also meaning linked behind this shift. The 2d plane of the mini games represented a curated life that is created on social media and so we wanted the artwork here to look better than the low poly style of our game's 'reality.'

After creating the assets we got down into the process of putting all the pieces together. It was an experience for sure...

At 3 am Roy lament’s “You know what, I don’t need anything to calm me down when I find out my scene has been overridden, sometimes when you are heartbroken, you feel nothing but the void, I'm in that mood Now.” These are an excellent reflection of how this project went. We felt as if we were in a good place the day before the project was due, but then Unity decided it was NOT having that and the bugs and crashes and losses of content were devastating. Besides, Binna's 3D assets, the enter landscape details, have gone as well!!! she did not say a word.... but to build them again due to unreliable Unity Team. We had to dig very very deep and bust our humps all night in order to prevail.  Much of the development process became slogging through error after error relying on each other to just make it work as we went.

Despite this sour turn of events the process leading up to this point was well organized and productive. We had extensive notes and libraries of research and inspiration. We worked on developing assets and code well together and were able to generate some unique and new (at least to us) elements of play that were very satisfying.