Disorder

Disorder began as a concept for a game development class in 2012. We built a full design document and a rudimentary playable prototype, as a way to develop the skills to pitch a project.

The pitch was so successful that our team of four decided to carry development forward as our senior project, eventually winning the degree program's Best in Show award at the end of the year (as well as a few other awards in individual categories).

While our team of four all physically went our separate ways after graduation, some landing industry jobs, we decided to start an LLC -- Swagabyte Games -- and keep working on this project together. For my part, I was working part time at Domino's as a pizza delivery driver to make ends meet during this time.

As the game started growing in scope and establishing its unique visual and auditory style, we started bringing it to various conventions to show it off, get more eyes and hands on controllers, and hopefully drum up support to get it onto Steam via their "Greenlight" process.

In 2014, Disorder was awarded as...

• 1st place winner of the student competition at Captivate Conference

• a finalist in the SXSW Gamer's Voice category

• Best Art at Indie Bits

At the Captivate Conference in Austin, TX, we also caught the eye of members of the ScrewAttack Games team, which led to a publishing partnership that allowed further funding of Disorder's development through early 2015.

The team consisted of four members:

• A sound designer who custom-made all of the sound effects and music in the game.

• An artist who created the palette, characters, backgrounds, set pieces, animations, and marketing assets.

• A level designer who created level layouts and puzzles.

• And me!

My role was spread across a number of areas, largely: design, writing, project management, coding, and business relations. 

As designer and writer, I drove the high level flow of the game experience, narratively and mechanically. I wrote the game story and created the majority of experiential mechanics, from concept through finished product. From character and camera movement (huge determinants of gamefeel in a platformer) to narrative set pieces, to the layering of mechanics over many levels, to a level hub and secret unlocks, to an animated story journal, to new environmental hazards and gameplay interactions, I covered a lot of ground.

As project manager, I created and managed a Trello board for task tracking. I worked with the rest of the team to set up a version control system that could accomplish our needs. I kept tasks assigned to all team members, followed up when folks were falling behind or not engaging actively, and established a lot of the communication guidelines and principles that kept us aligned, and ultimately got us across the finish line.

As primary coder, I used the Flixel library for ActionScript 3.0 (I know!) to implement all of the team's levels, designs, art, animations, and sounds. While the other designer on the team had a large part in the early stages of setting up the project architecture and levels, I took over the majority of coding tasks for the bulk of the project. By the time we shipped, I'd re-architected the vast majority of original code and structure to support the increased scope of the project.

As the business driver, I set up and maintained the LLC. I was our primary liaison with our publisher. I wrote and drove the process for amendments to our employment contracts with the team. I set up our website and our Steam page. I handled media requests, interviews, press codes, etc. I even did our taxes! Having done all of that, I truly, deeply, indelibly understand the value and importance of having someone with actual expertise driving business management and media relations.