Written by Ollie
Throughout semester 2, I have felt very fortunate to be part of the Soul Keeper team: all of my teammates are extremely hard-working and talented, and from talking to my friends and peers alike, I believe no other team in our class has had a stronger overall sense of communication that we did as a group. We have had very minimal arguments between us, and all of us treated each other greatly with nothing but friendliness and respect.
I am certainly pleased with our combined outcome of Soul Keeper! Like many others, I think the art work from our team has been outstanding: the paper doll aesthetic, character/animal designs and animation style has given our game a very strong sense of character and has helped it stand out among other games not just among our peers, but all games in general. The programming work done by Misty has also been incredibly strong (pun intended) and her skills have done a lot of heavy lifting (again pun intended) for the team. I do feel with Yulia we have had an imbalance in communication and engagement from the team at large, however it has not affected our ability to deliver a strong final product.
On a personal note, I am pleased with what I have produced and feel like my work and communication within the team has been consistent, however I do feel like I could have contributed a good amount more to the final game. Though unintentional, my work within this project ended up being very specialised which I feel does not reflect my given role of technical designer very well, and so I feel disappointed in myself in that aspect. It motivates me to learn and improve myself, though; in future projects I will take more accountability for my role and push myself to be significantly more hands-on.
Written by Misty
During this group project, although my primary role was Mechanical Designer, I ended up taking on many responsibilities that were closer to a Technical Designer’s role. For example, I spent many time helping the art team import assets into Unity, managing resource integration, and acting as a bridge between the technical and art sides of the project. While these tasks helped maintain the overall workflow and reduced development issues, they also took away time that I could have spent focusing more deeply on gameplay mechanics and player experience design.
Looking back, the main reason for this was my concern about collaboration and version control at the beginning of the project. I worried that if too many people uploaded assets or modified files on GitHub at the same time, it could create conflicts or problems within the project. Because of this, I chose to take on more responsibilities myself in order to keep the project stable and organized.
This experience made me realize the importance of trust in teamwork. I should allow each member to take their own responsibilities. In the future, I would place more trust in my teammates and allow them to handle the parts they are responsible for. At the same time, I would set clearer boundaries for my own role so that I can dedicate more attention to designing and refining gameplay mechanics or puzzles, improving player experience as a Mechanical Designer.
Written by Swan
I am both delighted and fortunate to be a member of the Soul Keeper team. This project has significantly improved my mindset and deepened my understanding of the group work process, and I am certain that it is only through working with my teammates in this group that I have made such great progress.
At the beginning of the project, I was feeling down due to personal setbacks in interpersonal relationships and assignments from the previous semester. As a result, I was initially guarded and skeptical toward everyone, and I lacked confidence in my own work. I was assigned the role of environment artist rather than character design, which is my specialty. At first, I was eager to swap roles with Lettie, but through subsequent discussions and practical work, I gradually realized I could excel in my role. Regarding group discussions, I have never experienced such a positive and collaborative atmosphere. Previously, I was always worried that my ideas would be rejected due to my perceived lack of ability, but my teammates took my suggestions seriously, which gave me the confidence to voice my thoughts during the middle and later stages of the project. However, I still have room for improvement in communication. Rather than speaking directly with team members in English, I tend to rely on translation tools for online communication or ask Misty to convey my ideas on my behalf. I will work hard to improve my spoken English skills. I’d like to extend a special thank you to Misty—she always tests and provides immediate feedback on how my art assets look in-game, allowing me to make adjustments right away and significantly boosting our efficiency.
Written by Yulia
Working on Soul Keeper this semester made me understand more about both teamwork and the World Designer role. At the beginning of the project, I think I did not really understand clearly what a World Designer should do in the team. Most of the time, I focused more on my own research and organising ideas first. Because of communication pressure, sometimes I also did not join discussions very actively.
But later, when I started doing more world-building, audio selection and narrative work, I slowly realised that world design is actually connected with many other parts of the game. Things like atmosphere, player feeling and even gameplay direction can all affect each other.
I believe this project also opened my eyes to the importance of communication in group work. I would sometimes wait until my ideas felt more complete before sharing them with other people. Reflecting back, I think talking to the team earlier would have helped understand my ideas better. I still think I need more work about how to communicate and engage with team members in a teamwork setting; however, this project helped me learn about my role better and gave me experience in a development team.
Written by Scarlett
Being a part of the soul keeper team has been a delight, in previous group projects I have taken on a leading role most often being involved in the coding too. This semester it has been brilliant to work on my art skills and focus on character design. I was initially unsure about animating as I had never done it before but after meetings with the team I was introduced to a paper doll style of animating, this let me slowly build up my skills by going from physical to digital. It has been very satisfying to work on this and recieve feedback from peers and lecturers. The improvement I saw over the project has been satisfying.
Looking back over the project I have worked on things mostly by myself occasionally forgetting that I could make things easier and get support from the team and the parts they have done. In the final weeks of the project I started to become more comfortable with this and collaborating more without being prompted by my lecturer.
I am immensely proud of the final outcome of the vertical slice both the parts I have contributed and the work of my team. The public playtest experiences were helpful and interesting to get a glimpse of how the industry works, getting people to provide their honest opinions on the game it was a learning moment to put aside how you feel about a project and put the players experience first.
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