In my last post, I focused on what it means to be a developer and how there is always a next step. For me, that next step is OASYS. Two weeks ago, our small team, Graveyard Shift, was formed. This small team consists of five people - myself, another designer, a programmer, an artist, and a producer. Our first job as a new team was to come up with a concept.
We spent the first half of week one coming up with a massive spreadsheet of settings, characters, and mechanics that we were interested in. Over the course of that week, we narrowed that list down until we were left with three sets of settings, characters, and mechanics that we liked. Once we got to the top few choices, we spent nearly a full hour debating what we wanted to work on. It was a collaborative process, with each of us spending time outlining what things we liked and what things we didn't like. We decided early on that we wanted our concept to be a unanimous decision, so it was extremely important that everyone had a voice and got input on our final concept.
By the end of the week we had a solid idea of what we wanted to do. It would be a 3D adventure game with puzzle elements focused around reviving a colony of robots, tentatively named "T1M" after the name of our main character, a plucky little robot whose mission is to restore the power to the hub. We spent the second week refining our concept, solidifying our ideas of what the game would be about. Along with some setting and concept changes, we changed the name of the game to OASYS, which is the name of the central power system that keeps the robots functioning in the game. We also devoted a large amount of time to fleshing out our hub, with that being the focus of our pitch.
This coming Wednesday, we'll be presenting our greenlight pitch for OASYS. My team also decided that I should be the Product Owner and our greenlight representative, which means I'll be spending a good amount of time after the presentation debating with representatives from other teams. I can confidently say, however, that I believe in our project, as does the rest of my team. Going into greenlight, we all know that there is a not insignificant chance that our team gets cut, as is the nature of any studio concepting phase. Despite this, my team is confident that what we've created is worth pursuing, and we hope that the rest of the teams agree. Whether or not Graveyard Shift and OASYS exist past this week, it's been an incredibly journey to work with this team, and I'm confident that we'll all be where we belong come next sprint.