Gods and Shadows

Overview

Gods and Shadows is a custom JRPG built for a Make-a-Wish Foundation Wish Kid which I had the privlage to contribute to as part of my role as Gameplay Engineer at Boise State’s GIMM department. The game was designed around the child’s specific designes and story ideas, making them the hero of a mythological adventure with characters, storylines, and mechanics tailored specifically to them.

This was one of the most meaningful projects I’ve worked on: engineering joy for someone who needed it and getting to see their reactions to the game making process was wonderful.

My Role

• Unity developer for data systems at the start. By the end I was the project manager on the project guiding junior developers and helping teach them the skills and processed for the project.
• Implemented save/load system to allow the kid to come back to the game if not completed in one gameplay session.
• Collaborated with designers and artists to implement easter eggs for the kid to find, such as their dog as a shop owner, and a “Cheat” system they could discover if they type a code in a specific spot.
• Contributed to the character controller, combat system, and progression mechanics based on feedback from stakeholders and testers.
• Iterated rapidly based on feedback from the Wish Kid and their family in order to provide a game they were excited about from begining to end.

Key Features

• Personalized Narrative: Story, characters, and world built specifically around the wish recipient’s interests and imagination including multiple endings with some good and some bad.
• JRPG Combat System: Turn-based combat with custom abilities, status effects, and encounter design
• Complex Dialogue: Branching dialogue trees giving the player meaningful story choices
• Original Art Direction: Unique visual style developed in collaboration with the design team

Technical Highlights

The biggest challenge was building a complete JRPG within a tight timeline while keeping the scope flexible enough to incorporate feedback from the Make-a-Wish team throughout development. Creating the new Saving system along with achievements allowed the game to grow outside something that needed to be played in 1 session, and working with the Kid and their friends allowed us to implement many in jokes from their DnD campaign and other aspects of their lives.

What I Learned

This project reinforced the human side of game development. Technical excellence matters, but so does listening to what someone actually wants from an experience. Rapid iteration and empathy were just as important as any technical skills with this game and allowed us to get this project into the hands of the client quickly in a state they could then contribute to the development prosess as we built up new systems.