Insight #6 – Behemoth Postmortem

This week I’ll offer a postmortem analysis on the game Behemoth developed by Team Jabberwock for the Shoot ’em up course in the first year of the Game Design program at Uppsala University.
To begin with, I would like to offer a brief overview of the project. The game Behemoth was based upon the homonymous design document developed by Team Bugbear during the first semester of the education, its main aesthetic is ‘Feel like operating heavy machinery’.
The game is a 2D […]

Insight #5 – Playtesting and Feedback

This week I will comment on some of the feedback we received from the rest of the students during our alpha and beta playtesting sessions and how we approached the design of the game after that. This is a long one, so go get a cup of tea!
Alpha
For our Alpha presentation we found a table that was in one of the ends of a major flow of traffic, thanks to this we received a substantial amount of player feedback and […]

Insight #4 – Lasers & Animation

As explained in Insight #2 – Iteration, in our adaptation of the Behemoth game concept we decided on a military sci-fi setting with dystopian and cyberpunk elements through an arcade art style. Having this as our aesthetic cornerstone, we gravitated towards energy fields and lasers when we designed the visual representation of the ship’s dynamic elements; for example, we replaced the original explosive cannonball-like projectile with a powerful energy burst akin to that of an ‘energy attack’ as seen in […]

Insight #3 – Scrum

For the development of Behemoth we are using Scrum as our production framework, this decision was taken by the instructors in order for us to learn how to work with it and offer a time-structured design process.
Scrum is an Agile methodology, and as such, its main focus is flexible and iterative collaboration. Scrum specifically is aimed at smaller teams and uses short production cycles called “sprints”, which typically last between one week and one month, these start with a “sprint […]

Insight #2 – Iteration

In this entry I will present the iterative process behind the creation of the Behemoth’s cannon and the changes that it went through from its conceptualization until its current alpha-ready state.
The concept of Behemoth called for a disproportionately large cannon as one of the cornerstones of its aesthetic. With this in mind, we decided on a military sci-fi setting with dystopian and cyberpunk elements, which resulted in a simple yet rugged and powerful design. Our main inspiration came from SNES […]

Insight #1 – Setting the Scene

The original design document for Behemoth presented a simple yet challenging concept: “Feel like you are controlling heavy machinery”. This premise shaped how we approached the design and overall aesthetic of the game we are making, all the way from input controls to how the game looks and presents itself to the player. In this entry I will explain the thought process behind the layout of the game and what we try to convey with it.
One of the core elements […]

Developing Behemoth

Hello world!
With this blog I will try to offer some insight into how we are making a small game project and all the quirks involved on the game design and graphical side.
Updates will be weekly on Thursdays for the next 6 weeks.
 
EDIT: These links redirect to my comments on other student’s blog posts as required by the faculty in order to be able to grade my work. Feel free to read them too!
Week 1 – Comment on Isak Mansén’s blog: