Final Reflection: 'Horizon' & 'In Clover'

Hey guys! Happy Friday!

So today I want to do a final little reflection off the back of the last reflection blog covering 'What Is Home' (which the final title is now 'In Clover'). This FMOD games project is now all wrapped up, following a showcase night I attended in the Valley on Wednesday. Since starting this project I have also received some exciting statistics on 'Horizon', and since it was designed by a lot of the same team as 'In Clover' - I just want to have a final chat about the experience of working with game designers as a whole.

So firstly, Horizon:

Within the first few days of it's release on itch.io, it reached 115 downloads and 621 visits! The designers said it was more than they've ever gotten on their games, so that's super exciting to see the results of this project. Within the first few days of it's release on itch.io, it reached 115 downloads and 621 visits! The designers said it was more than they've ever gotten on their games, so that's super exciting to see the fantastic results of this project. I believe the aesthetic myself and the designers created is quite a popular one: low-poly and vibrancy with uplifting music is attention grabbing and fun, so whilst there were features we wished we had time to implement - I think we can pat ourselves on the back for creating a successful product within our time constraints.

At the Brass Razoo games showcase, which was held at This Must Be The Place in the valley ; players seemed to really enjoy the game, but more so - when no one was sitting down to play any of the music composition projects, the organisers kept putting Horizon back on because everyone was enjoying my music! It was a very satisfying feeling, and it was great because I got to have a chat with a lot of the other developers and guests there introducing myself and my music. I was also able to try out VR for the first time - my first instincts were to just throw stuff everywhere, and I somehow glitched out of the map twice - but it was hilariously fun!

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In Clover:

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So I was really excited to test this one out, as I wasn't able to try any of the playtests - and therefore never actually knew what the game looked like and/or how my sounds turned out ingame.

Overall, I think it was a fantastic job by everyone. In terms of design, I believe the top-down/Sims-esque view results in my sounds probably not being as effective as I would like. Sometimes the sense of positioning and where sounds should be coming from in the 3D environment felt a little awkward with the camera not being first-person, or just not reworked well for the top-down experience.

Other things lacking for me were that some sounds like the different types of footsteps where missing, since the team didn't finish the shoes and socks animations/models - resulting in the steps to just be my barefoot recordings. It would've also been great to have seen the character model actually interacting with objects (and having textures rather than being grey with a human shape), rather than sounds just playing and the character remaining static when you're close enough to press a button indicated by the light bulb symbol.

Like Horizon, whilst I understood the time constraints for the project - these are just things I objectively noticed about the experience that stood out to me as unpolished and/or unfinished. This definitely is a result of everything I mentioned in the previous reflection blog detailing the experience of this project.

So just as some closing thoughts; I believe it was a really valuable and rewarding experience to work with games! Some of the aspects of the team dynamics and project administration were detrimental to the final products, however a lot of it I believe was out of my hands - and I produced what was asked of me to the best of my ability. I've expressed my interest on working on more projects in the future, so I'm excited to see what's next with larger project scopes and more time & resources!

You can play both games via these links below: