Game Project 1: Furball Quest

In my first year of my BA Game Writing I worked on a group project creating a brand new game from scratch in the Unity game engine. It was the first time I had ever worked in an actual game engine as I had no true experience in game-making prior. 

All of my experience was based on writing and narrative. I love writing, it is a medium that allows me to lose myself in my imagination. Most of what I had written was in the form of prose, poetry, and lyrics. I was a writer and a gamer, simply because I had not thought of the idea of mixing the two until my final years of high school. 

Shortly before I started studying at the University of Skövde, I had experimented a bit with scriptwriting for movies, comics, and video games. Experimenting with different forms of writing taught me that stories can be told in different ways depending on the writing format. 

When early winter started rolling in on my first year of BA Game Writing, I was surprised to learn that I had to learn game engines. I was expecting to mainly be focusing on writing but that was not the case.  

Before Game Project 1, we had done a course on game prototyping where we got to work in Twine 2. I thought it was relatively straightforward as Twine 2 is great for text-based games. 

But Unity? That's a whole other story. 

We started with an intense couple of weeks doing a basic crash course on ALL disciplines. I'm talking animation, game design, game writing, programming, and sound. We had to learn how all disciplines interact with one another because even if our programs are doing their own specific thing, understanding how everything is intertwined was necessary because we had to work outside of our disciplines as well. 

The Tanuki of Wisdom

Communication is key, and there were a couple of groups of students that entered conflicts due to either creative differences or otherwise. Despite the intensity of the first couple of weeks, we all prevailed and came out stronger for it. Because now we understand the dynamics of game development in groups. 

Learning how to work in Unity was incredibly fun, even with having zero knowledge of game development prior. It gave me a different perspective on making games. It isn't all programming as I had originally believed. Many aspects of working in a game engine and making a game were much easier than I had expected. I felt relieved because, at the time, I didn't think I would be able to keep up. I did keep up!

My First Time Developing A Game

After the crash course weeks had concluded (and I managed to pass programming against all odds) we were given the assignment to start spitballing ideas for the game we were going to work on. We had free reins on what we wanted to build but were reminded not to make it into a large-scale project. 

This, I found, was slightly difficult to manage. Everyone has ideas and ideas are great! But time is also limited when it is an assignment. Going overboard and beyond our skills in such a small time frame will lead to burnout and missing important deadlines for playtests. 

We settled eventually on a cozy and wholesome game concept. The idea was that you play as a farm cat exploring the farm and beyond. You would meet animals and take on quests. We wanted puzzles, riddles, and cute characters with personalities and backstories. 

Gigi the goose counting from her beloved rock collection. The stray sheep is waiting for the farm cat (player) to guide it back to the pen.

All of these things we implemented! Some things were scrapped due to running out of time or the idea being too difficult to implement with our limited skills at the time. 

What I enjoyed the most about working on Furball Quest was that I was able to dip my toes in the game dev ocean. I got to truly test the mettle of my writing. I learned what worked and didn't work, and how character dialogue would be translated from page to game.

Working on this project granted me great insight into teamwork and dealing with creative differences. And despite there being some less-than-fun moments during my time on the project, I still have fond memories of the game development process. 

Maple the chonky bear needing help retrieving honey from a tall tree.

On Monday, I start the course Game Project 2. It will be the start of a new game with new group members to work with and fun new ideas! 

I am looking forward to it, even though the upcoming weeks becoming once again intense. According to the curriculum, it seems we are going to be focusing more on teamwork and leadership which I believe is valuable to learn.

I will bring with me all of the knowledge and lessons gained from working on Furball Quest as I enter Game Project 2. I think this year's game project will turn out much better and will be a lot more fun this time around since I have gained proper game dev experience.

Now I can finally call myself a writer, gamer, and game developer. 

// Monica Iris