Creating a brand

In 2016 Gorlami! was born and our goal was very simple - we wanted to create Advergames, games specifically developed to promote a particular product, service or brand. But we had a problem at our hands: no one knew us or what our games could look like. 

Instead of panicking, we saw this as an opportunity to level up. We decided to build a portfolio of bite-sized, fun games that would showcase our skills and could pave the way for Gorlami!'s future.

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Project Description

A Bedou is an old entity that lives inside every one of us. They're usually cool and easygoing, but you don't want to be around when they get hangry. The game was a quick and fun distraction, and you had to take care of your player feeding them with everything they asked for. OR ELSE

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My Role

In this project I was the Game Developer, Producer and led the outsourcing efforts for assets needed like music, code and art. 

My responsibilities included: 

Sprint Planning - Each sprint I’ve worked with the team to create a sprint plan detailing what the team needed to accomplish and how we planned to work. 

Product Backlog - Creating the product backlog to track progress and keep the team informed on what’s currently happening on the project. 

Communication - Being the key point of communication within the team, pro-actively helping team members that are blocked or are experiencing issues.

On the day to day operation, my work involved: 

• Oversee sprint planning, create and own the product backlog, and keep track of progress throughout sprints
• Oversee production cycle of each project, managing schedule, staffing, and delegation of responsibilities
• Create and own the Asset & Development Plan in consultation with the rest of the team
• Monitor other documentation and ensure its accuracy across the project
• Serve as scrum master
• Lead team through Sprint Reviews and Sprint Retrospectives, and document those conversations
• Plan and manage QA and user testing for each milestone

Postmortem - Angry Bedou's

Managing a game studio for the first time proved to be a significant learning experience, filled with both challenges and successes, but building our first game stretched our abilities and provided valuable insights. 

This postmortem will share key takeaways from our journey, highlighting both the effective strategies we implemented and the pitfalls we encountered. 

What went right: 

• We started early and had time to fix any issues on the design of the games
• We playtested extensively during early stages
• We kept the scope of the games small

What went wrong:

• Trusting without verifying - specially regarding mobile store rules for publication
• Should have pushed for more diversification on the level design of the games
• Some tasks overran their bounds, and team members got tunnel vision

What I learned: 

• Improved time estimates across the team over each project
• Respect of the pipelines is crucial
• Iteration is not only good, but necessary - First we needed to get it working, then we could worry about making it pretty