Alex Connolly - The Nameless Pebbles - Individual Portfolio

• For this collaborative project, my team wanted to create a narrative-driven psychological horror game, based around monophobia, the fear of isolation.
• Our game follows the story of a man who, after suffering a job loss and running into subsequent financial issues, has taken on a job as a caretaker for a rundown theater that had its heyday the 1950's. A snowstorm rolls through town, trapping him inside the theater with no easy way to communicate with the outside world. His goal is to wait out the storm until he can return home to his partner, while also completing his daily duties. As well this, the caretaker will also need to combat the feeling of isolation and maintain his mental health.

My primary roles during the project are Scrum Master and 3D Modeler.

Being Scrum Master involves keeping track of all team member's progress each sprint via Scrumwise and scheduling team meetings in order to create as efficient a process as possible that everyone can keep up with. These team meetings went over progress with completing work and deciding on backlog items at the beginning of each release, including story points and approximate hours for each task.

My 3D Modeling skills led to the creation of a wide range of models to be used in creating the architecture and props within our game, including interactable, task-related items. We were looking to achieve a game that looked like it came from the Playstation 1 era, and so keeping the polycount low was crucial. To help with this, I created models using Box-Modeling in both Maya and later Blender..

My secondary roles were that of UI Designer and UX Designer.

UI Design involved creating a diegetic UI that enhanced player experience and make them feel a part of the game. This included having few UI elements to allow players to experience the game or building them into mechanics that were planned for the game - one such example of this is the phone mechanic that allows the player to view their tasks and communicate with the outside world.

Taking on UX Design meant I could assess how the UI felt for our target audience and if changes needed to be made, along with other elements of our game like graphics and mechanics. I very much enjoy the testing process of any project, and so was excited to take on the task of having our game tested by end-users and analysing their feedback.