Climax And Culmination for Mirage
Updated: Nov 2, 2019
Team Somnus
In the development of Mirage, I was a part of a squad of six brave individuals. We called ourselves 'Team Somnus' named after the romanized version of 'Hypnos' - god of sleep, as a play on how little sleep we would get throughout.
Within this team I acted as a producer, animator, artist, sound designer and programmer. My tasks included presenting our game, managing the team, improving the visual and audio aspect of the game, designing the narrative, combat, player item and abilities.
Mirage
Our game is called Mirage: Symmetry combat.
Mirage is a puzzle RPG using the symmetry puzzle format. The player will partake on a fantasy experience fighting hideous monsters and earning powerful loot. You can download the game for free here, on Google Play. Or manually install using the APK download link:
Design Decisions
We came down to the decision of a a puzzle RPG, we designed randomized map generation with random events. Of course we took heavy inspiration from many existing titles. But we tried to be original with the puzzle oriented combat approach, trying to steer away from the likes of match three games, only to become visually indistinguishable to them. In realizing our lack of spotlight in terms of game play, we attempted story telling, I wrote many rooms detailing random events that could result in numerous outcomes, taking into account player choices. At one stage, the game was so over-scoped that I had introduced narrative rooms with different interactions depending on the class the player chose.
Oh that's right, we were going to have different classes, which would entail different narrative components as well as new strategies to how the player will go about solving the puzzles. From fast paced fight to the death characters like Ryla, to defensive and more precision based characters like Andoine, which naturally was removed during our much needed down-scoping phases.
Contribution
In the development of mirage, I acted as the producer, sound designer, a programmer and 2D animator/artist. I was tasked with conducting meetings, pitches and presentations, as well as facilitate the communication process across all team members.
In the the published version of the game. Some aspects directly showcasing my work include all of the start menu, loading screens, map animations and UI design, settings panel design (other than the codex), fonts, combat UI, tutorial UI/animations, the design of all in-game sounds, all narrative components, all text, and all the programming aspects to what was aforementioned.
I also designed and introduced the core puzzle mechanic, derived from a game called 'symmetria' that I was playing at the time. I have a full document detailing the design outcome of many ideas that was not implemented, including random narrative rooms, player decisions and interactions, varying loot depending on extenuating circumstances, classes, monitization plans including the purchase of newer classes with new abilities and narrative perspective and advertisement displaying in the top of the screen during gameplay.
What I learned
I learned a lot from the making of Mirage, particularly gaining new management skills including the better understanding of pitches, interpersonal skills within a group, the subtleties of communication, and the inevitability of down-scoping and ego management.
During this year-long development phase, I realized the potential of a productive team and also the importance of interpersonal skills within the team. I learned that good team was so much more than purely mix-matching skill groups. In the beginning, during the team speed-dating phase, where we sought after potential team mates, I was only focused on getting the skill groups needed, and finding individuals who are already well established in a field of work. What I soon realized was, and what I consider to be the most important lesson I was taught during this university unit, was the fact that personality and passion trumped everything. There were instances where one would have no idea how to approach a certain task, no prior experience to aid them and not even previous googling attempts. Yet some find the will in themselves to muster enough passion to face the pain and disappoint and in the end produce raw results. It has come to my attention that, albeit extremely cliched, that the journey we went through was far more the showcase than our individual selves in the beginning, or the game we have produced in the end.
Future plans
Currently Team Somnus has no future plans of resuming the development of Mirage, for, but not limited to, the implementation of new features and additional bug fixing as well as re-balancing of gameplay.
However, I am interested in the continuation of this IP and further efforts of studying the fast-paced puzzle RPG sub-genre and will consider the solo continuation of Mirage or similar titles alike.
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