Post-Mortem Reflection
By Leonice Brown-Young Jr
3/18/2021
Begin with project overview
Brief Overview of Project
Fast-paced, relentless first-person combat sandbox game full of magic and dinosaurs in a 3D procedural generated world.
Design Overview
The design of Toy Kingdom 2 centers around adding a combat mechanic functionality between the player and the Velociraptors. This would increase the tension and factors that go into the overall game.
Project Start
February 16th, 2021
Project Finish
March 18th, 2021
Product Purpose
The purpose of this game for MoonRift Entertainment and for Leonice Brown-Young Jr was to improve upon the core base of Toy Kingdom by adding combat mechanic and the system functionality.
Intended Customer
PC/Desktop frequent users who play and test out new independent games. In particular itch.io account users.
General Information
Opening Sentence
Toy Kingdom 2 is a Fast-paced, relentless first-person combat sandbox game full of magic and dinosaurs in a 3D procedural generated world.
Play as an action figure that has landed in a mysterious world. Gain the ability to harness the power of lightning, fight back against hordes of velociraptors and other deadly creatures. Play your own way, at your own pace. Collect all the protons to win!
Key Features
Procedurally Generated Worlds
Each game is a new map! Your luck will play a factor into how generous or unforgiving Toy Kingdom will be.
Combat System
Locate the lightning stone to gain the powers that will help you fend off and defeat the aggressive threats that aim to assert their dominance on the natural hierarchy.
Improve Your Home
Collect powerful protons and return them to your keep to improve the quality of your home and defenses.
Win in Toy Kingdom!
Document what went right
- The lightning powers and shield ability with the audio makes the player feel like they actually can destroy things in the game
- The velociraptors are cool and they swarm. The aspect of spawning and the pack mentality were successful.
- The T-Rex becoming more of an early boss fight and the accidental stun effort both worked great for this iteration.
- The audio of all of the additions to the game.
- Player visuals for hurt make it feel realistic, like the claw marks and screen going red.
- The clouds make the game a bit more aesthetically pleasing, as well as the discovery of the use of grass
- Learning many different ways to code and set up functionality. Now I have a process flow for when going into new tiers.
- The pacing of the game and much more marketing awareness and attention
- The video/trailer was definitely a lot more engaging to make than the prior video
- Velociraptor orchestra!
- Removing things or shelving when overscoping was happening early on in production
- Keeping myself healthy and in shape during production by giving myself ample amount of rest and working out for each rank I get in Apex Legends. I love and hate that game.
Document what went wrong
- The audio mixing of the sounds, for the next iteration will definitely need to re-prioritize and create a sheet that dictates what sounds will be in priority over what (e.g. raptors swarm cancelling out footsteps)
- I still feel as though I haven’t gotten to the core loop of a true Toy Kingdom universe yet. Though the bricks are being laid, I know there is much more before I get it truly to where I want it
- The skybox system is going to require a substantial amount of effort to get a fantasy sky versus the “kind of boring” yet efficient system that Unity naturally uses.
- The wind effect on some plants, such as the Lightning Stone area, messes up the meshes completely, need to reduce the affect on those particular plants
- The block level still needs improvement, it is actually difficult to jump up as stated by the feedback from Leon
- Potentially needing to add a health or energy bar system, somewhere even if its faded and subtle.
- THE SPRINT SOMETIMES STOPS WORKING RANDOMELY, NEED TO FIGURE OUT. Luckily this issue gets fixed on its own somehow and it occurs so rarely to even notice.
- The area around the map looks dull and basic, it kind of throws off the player that they are floating instead of being on ground or surrounded by mountains.
- For Instagram marketing, make sure you have a random clip of your cover you want so that you can use that frame as the cover photo on the IG board.
Assess your risk management
The risk for this time around was over scoping but that was mitigated. Another risk was attempting to create the velociraptor orchestra, this was unknown territory but it ended up paying out dividends. Another risk was burnout towards the end of the project, not on the development side but on the figuring out website, social media, etc side of things. Will definitely need to polish the skillset of marketing for the next iteration.
Assess mid-project changes
Having to remove the ability to summon a pet wolf, was something that I was a little disappointed in but I knew it needed to happen if I were to give myself enough time to polish the game for release. Also, once I got to a point where the cadence was going, it was actually a good thing for me to move away from the excel spreadsheet and go to a more natural pen and paper tracking of all the objectives that need to be done. So much of the work is done online and on the computer, that a break for other things like tracking actually helps overall.
Draw meaningful conclusion!
In conclusion, I will say that this was a very successful sequel launch. I do not know how many sales it will garner, but in terms of improvement and being able to build upon a pre-existing IP I can proudly say that I accomplished that. There is much more for me to learn, many more skills and talents that aren’t necessarily programming related that I can refine and build upon (I.g. video editing and marketing), I can also start to be a little more proactive with reaching out to people.
Take Action
Next action plan is to take a break when I return home to see my family. Read Toy Kingdom 3, and draw inspiration from that unpublished work in order to see what comes next in the Toy Kingdom pipeline. I’m excited to continue to work towards my 10,000 hours, and one day all of these efforts will pay off; how do I know this? Because they already are.