The Grove: Postmortem

The Grove is a two-dimensional side-scrolling puzzle adventure game for the android tablet.  It was developed as a student game by a five-person team, One Eye Productions.  The game was developed using Unity over the course of a semester.  On this project, I held the roles of Assistant Lead and Programmer.  The information below was collected from a 360 postmortem at the Guildhall.

What went well

For Individuals:

For the team:

Takeaway:

“The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” dictates that trust is the founding principle for all healthy and successful teams.  From the beginning of the project I challenged our team to give feedback honestly and in-person.  In addition to peer evaluation assignments at the end of each sprint, our team would sit in a circle and give one another important feedback.  This came in the form of high praise or constructive criticism.  Ideas flowed freely and criticism was expressed and accepted.  This simple addition to our process allowed our team to navigate personal issues that arose swiftly and efficiently.  We developed a culture that revolved around candid communication and that radical candor served us well throughout our development cycle.

What went wrong

For Individuals:

For the team:

Takeaway:

Every sprint our team received user feedback from a different faculty member.  We took their suggestions as law and designed our game for the most recent tester.  The important details about our game were forgotten. Development moved away from some of our initial ideas and into a different realm.  For example, one of the ideas in our pitch was to give the player no direct control over the characters.  Similar to Lemmings or Mario vs Donkey Kong, the characters would move on their own. It was to be the player’s job to keep them safe and guide them to the end of the level.  However, due to the unusual initial concept, we received feedback from a single tester that perhaps controlling the characters would be a better idea.  Instead of sticking up for our design, we simply followed what we thought were instructions.  The final product ended up being representative of many wandering alleyways that lead away from the main street that was our game concept.

What we learned

As Individuals:

As a team:

Takeaway:

Communication cannot be understated.  One Eye spent a lot of time giving one another feedback.  We modified design, quality expectations, and interpersonal relationships over the course of development.  There were bumps that came up during development that we navigated using the high level of communication we exhibited.  For instance, early in the project the artists had a disagreement over expectations in the art department.  Being new to the development world we were unsure how to approach and solve this issue.  Our willingness to sit down and speak openly about our feelings and desires for the game guided us back to safe ground.  A solution was found and agreed upon and we went back about our business.  Any coach would say that there is often more to be learned from a loss than from a win.  While there is value in wins, extracting the gold from a loss is ultimately more valuable to a team.  When we did have losses throughout development, our communication skills helped find that gold and turn the tides back in our favor.  The one common lesson that was learned throughout the team is that communicating clearly, early, and often can turn around the course of development and result in a team victory.