Project Plan
Vision Statement
Development Team
The development team consists of twenty-five people, this is a smaller sized team for a project that can be accomplished by having the right assets and structure assigned to knowledgeable developers. The team will consist of the following:
1. Production
Producer (one person) - The producer will be the person looking over the entire project, making sure that all the moving pieces are in order and are being completed by the project deadlines. They will be responsible for making sure the game is created within the given budget for the title. The producer will meet with the project leads to be kept up to date with progress, they will also be the voice of the development team.
2. Art
Lead Artist (one person) - It is important to have a lead artist who understands the vision of how the finished game should look. This person will be working closely with all other parts of the development team to make sure the art is of the quality and standard that is required of the game.
Concept Artist (two persons) - This position will be outsourced, the reason for this being outsourced is that once the concept art is done and to the standard needed for the project, this position will be no longer needed for the remainder of the project. It makes more sense to outsource this position to save money for other parts of the project. This position will be responsible for creating all concept art for levels, assets, characters, and user interfaces for the project. They will report to the Lead Artist.
Level Designers (3 persons) - Level designers will be tasked with creating levels for the video game, the levels they create will have to be tiled and made in a way that they can be randomly generated with each other and not look like they do not mesh. They will report to the Lead Artist as well as the Creative Director to ensure that these levels are created in a way that works with the overall game.
Asset Artist (2 persons) - The asset artist will report directly to the Lead Artist. They will be responsible for creating all used assets in the game. These assets will be based on art gathered from the concept art. The assets will have to be made to be used among multiple levels.
Animator (1 person) - This position will be outsourced. The animator will be responsible for creating all animated features for the game including the cutscene. These scenes will be important and need to be reviewed by the Lead Artist and the Creative Director to make sure they are what is needed for the game. The animator is only needed for certain parts of the project and after a certain point in the project may not be needed, this could change depending on if additional edits are needed that cannot be handled in house.
Technical Artist - There will be one technical artist who is mainly responsible for making sure collisions are smooth and adding physics to assets within the game world.
3. Engineering
Technical Director - The technical director will be responsible for overseeing all programming for the game and making sure that all code is up to standard and uniform across all parts of the game.
Lead Engineer - The lead engineer will be an extension of the technical director; they will be working more closely with the engineers on the project and making sure that the code works and does not crash the game.
Engineers (3 persons) - The engineers will be responsible for all code related to the game. They will report directly to the lead engineer and technical director.
4. Design
Creative Director - The creative director will be responsible for making sure that the vision is carried out throughout the entirety of the project by all teams.
Lead Designer - The lead designer for this project will be the liaison between the design team and the Creative Director. They will be responsible for directing the design team on day-to-day tasks.
Designers (2 Persons) - The designers will be responsible for multiple roles within their department, including systems design, UI Design, and scripting. These responsibilities will be given out by the lead designer.
5. Quality Assurance
Quality Assurance Lead (1 Persons) - The quality assurance lead will be outsourced to oversee the quality assurance testers. This is done since these roles are needed for specific periods during development.
Quality Assurance Testers (2 Persons) - Testers will be an outsourced role on this project, they will be overseen by the Quality Assurance Lead who will be outsourced from the same company.
6. Sound/Audio
Sound Designer/Composer - The sound designer and composer will be one person and they will be outsourced. During the time on the project this person will work closely with the design team and producers to make sure that they are creating music and audio that meshes with the creative vision for the project.
Risk Analysis
1. As an independently developed game with a smaller team size, budget and timeline constraints present risks. Scope creep from feature exploration or polish phases running long could jeopardize the planned budget and release window. Outsourcing certain roles like animation helps manage costs but introduces communication/quality risks from external dependencies. The team will need experienced producers and directors to help mitigate scope inflation through tightly managed milestone-driven development. Any delays or overages would threaten the commercial viability of the project by missing key platform release windows or seasonal sales opportunities. Contingency buffering in the schedule and budget will be required to help ensure targets are met despite unforeseen challenges.
2. A core feature and focus of the game is its use of procedural generation for the labyrinth levels. However, truly random levels run the risk of producing environments that do not feel cohesive or designed with good game flow in mind. Rooms may lack connections, contain unintended dead-ends, or feature enemy/trap placements that make progression unfair or impossible. Extensive testing will be needed during development to tune the generation algorithms and establish clear rules to ensure levels feel handcrafted while still delivering fresh experiences each playthrough. Level designers may need to iterate on their room designs and connective pieces to work better within the constraints of the system. Failure to address these procedural issues could seriously undermine the intended replay value if runs feel broken or frustrating as a result of poor level generation outcomes.
3. With a focus on unlocking new abilities that can be mixed and matched in combat, maintaining challenging but fair encounter balancing will be crucial. New player powers risk making fights either too easy if overpowered or frustrating if underwhelming. Bosses and tougher enemies may need to dynamically scale or change their AI based on the player's current arsenal to prevent encounters from becoming trivial or impossible too early. Ongoing adjustment and playtesting will be needed to refine the difficulty curve and ability synergies/counters. Without proper iteration, balancing issues could undermine the satisfaction of mastering Elementus' growing toolkit if victories feel unearned or defeat feels unfairly punishing.
The purpose of the game entertainment, the player may learn to navigate the moral gray area that a lot of superhero stories work around. The entertainment value of the game is given by its randomness and differences in each playthrough. The measure of entertainment is given by the players ability to make choices and decide on different strategies to complete the level. The game will be used in spurts, the player may play a level or two and then take a break to go to school or work. The levels will be made to be completed in a reasonable amount of time to allow the player to drop in and out of the game.
Player Mode
Fallen Hero: Rise of Elementus is primarily designed as a single-player experience where one player controls Elementus through each randomized run of the labyrinth. This single-player mode is the core focus of development to ensure a tightly crafted gameplay loop centered around continuous improvement of Elementus' abilities. However, the game architecture will support limited 2-player cooperative play for additional optional modes. In co-op mode, two players will be able to team up locally through either split-screen or same-screen gameplay to face greater challenges presented by a shared run. While the main campaign will be cap at a single player, these supplemental co-op modes provide opportunities for social play among friends or family members in the same physical space. Online or LAN multiplayer is not planned for launch due to scope but may be explored in future updates if the co-op modes prove popular enough to warrant further development.