​Rise of the Jemhaji.

My Role: Producer & Lead Developer
Team size: 7
August 2020 - September 2021
During my Self-Employed Placement (SEP) Year, I started developing a mobile title called Rise of the Jemhaji. It is a sci-fi 2D RPG with puzzle elements being built in Unity. The game is a single player adventure through the fictional galaxy of Eridani, with the player exploring the game through a story driven questline. Rise Of The Jemhaji will contain well-known RPG mechanics such as crafting, gathering and skill-trees, and will have 6 player classes to choose from. The game will be published on the Google Play Store by my own indie company, called Dyak Studios.

I am the Producer and Lead Developer, and I have worked with 6 freelancers on the title (5 2D Artists, 1 UI Artist). Development is currently on hold.

The game was showcased at the CCI 2021 Graduate Show, and screenshots have been used in advertising my university course.
My Role.
As the Producer, I used Kanban with Jira to manage the project's tasks. This was mainly to keep myself on track as I was doing the majority of the development on my own. I also completed a development risk assessment so I was aware of the issues that could arise during the year. I also completed business plan and business case documentation to justify the company and the game.

I am not an artist, and therefore I hired multiple freelancers to create art assets for the project. I wrote up and advertised job descriptions, drafted contracts, and discussed my ideas with them to come to a final idea on what the artwork would look like. To be able to do this, I applied for funding and was successful.
​As the Lead Developer I utilised my knowledge of Unity and C# to program the RPG mechanics that I wanted to include in the game. I used GitHub as my version control, and updated it regularly. I also completed all design work, and this included creating a Games Design Document using Google Sites, writing a Story Bible, and creating an asset tracking spreadsheet to store the progress the freelancers were making on their work. 
What's going well?
  • As this is a self-directed project, I have been able to gain first-hand experience with Jira and teach it to myself.
  • I have been able to complete small portions of production documentation, which prepares me well for the Final Year group project.
  • Working with freelancers was successful, and good relationships have been built for the completions of future work.
  • During the SEP year, time management was good and all tasks were completed in good time and therefore substantial progress was made with the project.
What needs improvement?
  • Due to Scope Creep and starting my Final Year of my studies, motivation to complete this project has dwindled. To successfully publish a public beta to the Google Play store, time management needs to be improved and a clear MVP needs to be established.
  • Jira is a very detailed way of managing a project, and therefore I had no motivation to make full use of its features because it was only myself using it. In the future, I may swap to Trello for my task management as it is more appropriate for a personal project.