Recruitment and Design
Before the start of this project after I have recruited the team based on their skills as environmental artist, gameplay programmer and such. I decided to make a boss battle game which not only challenges one side of the roles but challenges every role (Design, Programmer and Art) instead of creating a management sim which is heavy on design and programming.
The Initial pitch of the boss battle game was almost the same of what you can see today in terms of the story but the mechanics were much more complex and unnecessary. The initial Idea was that the player was able to switch between 4 tails something similar to Xenoblade Chronicles 2 which had to switch between 4 weapons and each weapon can inflict a status effect if the player manage to combo well.
This turned out to be really complicated and difficult for the player to understand which was the same in Xenoblade that has to teach the player even hours in the game which we don't posses the time in doing. So, I had to tone the 4 tails mechanic down and instead swapped it with a spirit change system which was much more easier and understandable.
I wanted the player to move like a fox and posses the speed for it but also able to do high damage when the opportunity comes by being smart as a fox. So there is when the Lunar and Solar Mode was made. There are also actual folklore about the sun and moon fox in Japanese mythology but it was very hard to come by and there were not much detail about it which was good for us because we can make this fox behave the way we want it to be in game which the main focus being having the power of the Sun and Moon.
I wanted the game to be challenging but also not give the player too much challenge on the control and movement part like dark souls that has very long input delay when doing actions. I wanted Aiko to be a fast moving smooth flowing character and the boss a slower moving hard hitting character which was a challenge to do because they are 2 different movement dynamics.
To make up for the characters fast speed I utilized attacks swinging and AOE attacks that cover a certain area as well as the use of minion which I don't see other games when portraying Shuten Doji because its a part of mythology.
Managing the Team
The overall task is controlled by me and we also have 2 meeting every week regarding any problems and issues with the game and certain decisions that we had to make during that week to continue the task. The tasks are given out and discussed during the meetings so everyone knows what they have to do before actually doing it. Task are given through our discord channel.
The discord channel is used almost everyday to update on each other's task and ask feedback from everyone. This agile way of working from home was very beneficial to us and was very efficient to us as we can pin messages and even video call to check on status and discuss about issues with each other.
Any bugs were also reported on discord then immediately tested again for QC by everyone. I frequently tested the game in UE4 and build it to test it again to ensure that bug does not occur again and run a few different test on the gameplay flow as well to see if the flow of the player from start to end is smooth.
Some other things like the Sequences which is hard to remember exactly how the camera will move had to be done in a video format to ensure the dialog is at the right place and the camera movement is right. The sequences can be seen here: Sequence Folder