About the project:
This game was pitched at the start of the Game Production 1: Arcade Games course by my good friends Anna Hatzl and Ottilia Hedberg. Having already worked Anna before and feeling confident about the project I joined as the producer of the project and as a programmer. This game would be the first project I would work on with the Chonk Cats Productions.
During the course we were tasked with making a game using our own custom arcade inputs. An additional challenge of this project was that it would be displayed at GGC 2022 where the public would be playing it as well. The game that Anna and Ottilia had pitched was a two-player platformer. In the game one player would roll the fat cat to the left and right while the other player would press a button whenever the cat should jump. The goal would be to have the cat eat as much as possible while maneuvering through the house. The two-player focus later on got dropped for single player and an end point was added to the game. We also added a fun new mechanic that would allow the player to throw items of shelves.
My work on the project:
As mentioned above I took on the role of a producer and programmer during the project. In addition to this I also took on the work of building the physical inputs and arcade machine itself. Due to this my workload at times was difficult to keep track of and I had to set clear limits for my working hours to prevent overworking.
My work as a producer on this project was very minor compared to some of my more recent projects. This was my first real experience of using scrum and Jira in a full project setting and I learned a lot from this experience. While I still didn’t grasp everything completely this project left a great foundation for the projects in the year after.
When it comes to working as a programmer and building the arcade machine my work overlapped to a certain extent. There was a lot of work in figuring how to get the controls to work well and reactive enough in the game. However, as a programmer I also worked on the systems for the score and its pop-ups in the game. While I probably won’t pursue programming much further it was a great insight in the work of a programmer.
