Black Mass

Working as a Gameplay Designer, I've learned that creating a horror game is not as easy as it seems. Despite not really being a fan of the horror genre, I had an interest to create a horror game at some point. My initial opinion that it can't be that hard to scare the player changed pretty soon into the project, after our first attempts to create scares, in the uncanny environment that we created, failed to land on play testers. Some worked better than others, depending on how easy it was to scare a person. After multiple cycles of iteration and play test, we managed to combine our environment with fitting scares, that make the player feel paranoid and scares them when wanted.

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Through my role as Co-Producer and in connection with my role as Gameplay Designer, I got a better understanding of how important the right amount of mechanics for a small project like this is. The player doesn't need 3 different items that they can use to solve puzzles in 10 - 15 minutes of game play. Focusing on one main mechanic (in this case the camcorder) and creating smaller functions, that make the camcorder easier to use (like a zoom or a flashlight) and that give it a purpose (a dark room so the player needs the flashlight on the camera), are far more important.

Working as a Co-Producer on this project while being a visiting student from another University, improved my way of working with SCRUM and my knowledge about Production. As the Game Design program at Abertay includes Production, I was able to watch people at work that have gotten a more detailed introduction into Production than I had. I was also able to ask questions and try it out myself when picking up the role of the Co-Producer. I believe that I had a positive influence on the re-scoping of the game, that helped us reaching our goals for this project. I also worked with Jira for the first time and learned how to create work flows, sprints, etc.