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 of the team, 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 a large chunk of the UI and a bunch of other smaller things.
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.