Rise To The Top

Rise to the Top

 

Final Year 1 project at AIE Seattle; “Minor Production”.

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Rise to the Top is a 3D, rocket-jumping platformer where players ascend a perilous castle inside the imagination of a 10-year old recovering their cat, Princess, from the ‘EVIL’ neighbor!

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I was the Lead Producer, Narrative Designer, and Cutscene Artist.  Coordinating a team of 11 people, many of which had never met before this project, was an experience full of struggle, challenge, and priceless lessons learned.

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We Rise to the Top in Unity 2019, Agile-produced through Hack n Plan, distributed on Itch.io.  Created 100% remotely, over Microsoft Teams & Perforce, during the Covid Quarantine, by 11 people and one kick-ass staff advisor in just under 18 work days.

 

Roles I fulfilled:

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• Iterated on and finalized a pre-existing pitch into a core design document for the team to reference.

• Worked with my truly awesome fellow design-producers, Tyler Baldwin & Kevin Bryan, to design and hold the vision for a game intended for children ages 8+.

• Worked professionally with the team’s family & friends to coordinate their children’s artwork as concepts for all of our ferocious monsters.

• Organized our project into Sprints, held daily SCRUM stand-ups, and task managed for the entire team through Hack n Plan.

• Coordinated all art & animation assets, and handled their Unity integration.

• Wrote the Dialogue Script.  Not that long, but maybe good for a laugh or two :)

• Worked with our brilliant UI artist, Alli Philips, to create the Opening Cutscene.  I wrote the story and edited the content, but that ridiculously fun art is all theirs.

• Easter Egg:  The protagonist’s room is full of references to the other 1st Year teams’ games!  (Alli’s idea!)

• Working with my fellow design-producers, created & coordinated external QA feedback for each game’s build until Release.

• Presented a game build & Developer Logs at the end of every Sprint for virtual showcases to the Seattle, Lafayette, and Australia AIE campuses.  The Dev Logs are 3-4 minute videos of our progress, captured & edited by me.  I would also answer questions and explain components of our builds live.