Lead Producer/Desiger
Unreal Engine 4
Fast-paced, Asymmetric, Multiplayer, Roguelike
Aug 2020 - May 2021
Created with a Team of 16 People
play the Game for yourself
Summary
Within 8 months, Synthbiotic Studios created Synthbiotic Dungeon for our senior capstone at the University of Utah. In the Spring of 2021, we published it as a free-to-play multiplayer title on Steam with the goal of providing a quick and fun experience to connect friends during the COVID-19 crisis.
Development on this title revealed showed me the importance of strong adaptability because of the scope and complex genre challenges we encountered. We made it our goal to immerse players in a fast-paced synthwave-themed twist of Crawl, that emphasizes teamwork instead of individual success.
As Lead Producer
As Lead Producer, I oversaw the team's workflow, combining Scrum and Kanban Agile practices. This framework included facilitating team standups, managing tasks in Trello, and blocking out sprint deliverables. Because of the smaller team size, I tracked tasks from every team member and gave presentations on our progress in bi-weekly sprint reviews. I also held sprint retrospectives and milestone postmortems focused on sprint-to-sprint reflection and adaptation. Part of the job involved creating the LLC and setting the game up on Steam, along with creating the assets required for publishing the game. We developed the project during the start of COVID-19, so I hosted team bonding sessions in which the team collectively chose a game to play together.
Initially the vision holder for the project, I also took on the role of Lead Game Designer. At the start of the project, I iterated on gameplay diagrams, game design documents, game system spreadsheets, and specifications with related teammates. I also included single-player versions of said materials in the event that networking failed down the line. Throughout the project, I discussed system designs and implementations with other designers.
As Lead Designer
