Frontier Smash

Frontier Smash is an isometric action game taking place on an alien planet ripe with valuable crystal resources. Sent to an ‘uninhabited’ planet by Research Corp. the Merc has been hired to clear out legions of hostile aliens and blast his way through. You, as the Merc, must clear out hostile alien life and protect robot laborers as they harvest the resources for glorious corporate development. Take the fight to various different biomes and engage a variety of enemies on a strange alien planet. Armed with your grenade launcher and laser machete fight back against the creatures of alien worlds.

Specifications:

Engine: Unity for PC

Team Size: 4 Developers

Genre: Isometric Action

Development Time: 4 Months

Features:

-Hand drawn characters and enemies

-Destructible environments

-Dodging and two weapon options

-Project Lead

• Collaborated and led team through time management challenges and discipline juggling

-Game Designer

• Pitched game concept

• Created paper prototype

• Led mechanics design and art direction

• Handled player objectives and pacing

-Level Designer

• Crafted all levels and balanced enemy encounters

• Tuned enemy behaviors, stats, and spawn locations

-Producer

• Held daily standups and assigned/approved all work

• Led team through time management challenges

• Reprioritized creative pipeline and scope

What Went Well:

• Team rallied and pushed out good work after initial slow start.

• Scope and expectations of game were adjusted resulting in a finished product.

• Team believed in the project through production cycle.

What Went Wrong:

• Communication issues and poor time management resulted in a slow start.

  • Impeding progress through later sprints.

• As a team we did not dedicate enough time to work directly together.

  • Resulted in overlapping work and confusion over feature implementation.

What I Learned:

• Advocate for the team; I was not initially the producer for the project but took on the role early to facilitate more forward progress. Looking back, I should have helped the initial producer more as a teammate, rather than adopting the role myself.

• Know when to scope down; we eventually scoped down features and number of levels. It’s never easy to drop ideas that would improve the game, but it was needed to bring the project together.