Time to course correct!

You know what’s hard? Working for 5 weeks on a game and deciding you’re doing it wrong. Okay, maybe not completely wrong, but the approach could be improved for sure. So it’s time for Red Owl Games to take a step back. We’re taking the week off from active development on Operation Cartwheel and figuring some things out. At the risk of sounding punny, it’s time to course correct Operation Cartwheel.

Here’s the plan! Answer these questions. Come up with a new and improved plan. Execute said plan. Ship a fun filled game! Easy enough, right?

First, the questions.

1. Why are we making this game?
2. How should the players feel pre and post game play?
3. Are the game play mechanics we are inheriting fun? Can we cut any? Can we add any?
4. Why does @emmy_oop feel the need to push forward while @rocktavious feels like we have enough time to refactor again?

I discovered the answer to #4 while falling asleep last night. The 5 month time line is messing with my head! It seems so short that I want to just keep pushing forward to get something done but am struggling with not wanting to get just something done. Instead I want to come out the other end with a fun, full, game. To do that, I need more time. I’m still learning. And I’m still learning a lot. There’s Unity - it’s a lot in itself. Then there’s C#. That’s less since I come from a career in coding. I may have never coded with C# before but I already grasp the concepts behind it and a lot of the syntax. Often, I just need to figure out the right way to do something in C#. I already know it can be done. Then of course, there’s just game development. Game design is a beast in itself. Who knew so much went into it!? What’s the look and feel of the game? What does the game sound like? What keys should the player press? Should the keys be customizable? How should the game make the player feel? What’s should the menu be? Is the story engaging? How should the world map look? How should enemies look and behave? That’s before we even get into the reality of how to make any of it happen. So maybe I’m feeling a bit swamped and time crunched to get a great game experience out the door. On the bright side, this is an easy problem to fix! @Rocktavious and I decided to push out the timeline. We just need to decide how much.

So, long story short, we won’t be shipping our game at the end of September. We’re going to be spending the week answering the first three questions. Figuring out what kind of timeline we should move to. After all, one of our core values is Always enough time to do it the right way. And maybe we’ll be playing a little Elder Scrolls Online too.

But we won’t leave you with nothing! Take a look at the awesome art concepts that @rocktavious started fleshing out during the last sprint.