Lumberjacked

Lumberjacked

LUMBERJACKED is the story of two buff lumberjack bros who have their prized artifact, THE FRIDGE stolen by the BEER KING. In this co-operative puzzle action adventure game, you have to throw everything you have (and can find) at the woodland cronies of the BEER KING and the puzzles that stand in your way. Including your bro. Are you ready to throw the game?

A dark, immersive turn-based strategy RPG. Learn the art of 17th-century alchemy to free a doomed city from a bloodthirsty cult led by the great alchemist Mephisto.

Engine: Unreal Engine 4

Release date: 20th of June 2019

Genre: 2 player coop, puzzle, action-adventure.

 
 

Content and contributions:

  • Created a gym with gameplay moments including puzzle and combat beats that were reused in the final production map.
  • Took a pre-production concept and inherited it into a coherent final product with the coop mechanics centralised.
  • Polished the 3Cs and game feel of the characters.
  • Designed the HUB level and its minigames. From concept to shipped product.
  • Designed and delivered several beats in the first level.
  • Set up production processes for a multi-disciplinary team of 27.
  • Drafted QA processes and executed them resulting in a stable released product.

Releasing a pre-production concept

Responsible for the defining following features during an 8-week period, where we pushed a pre-production prototype to release on Itch.io

  • 3Cs of the characters through rapid iterative prototyping.
  • Creating feature breakdowns and flow diagrams of the features to collaboratively develop those cross-disciplinary.
  • Metric gathering by setting up a gym level
  • Concepting moments, and playtesting those in Unreal Engine.

Once these foundations and inspirations were set we moved on to full production.

Setup the level production pipeline

Due to the short production process, we had 3 important milestones to deliver before we started production of the levels: a vertical slice, a gym filled with combat and puzzle encounters, and lately, a horizontal slice.

My main focus was delivering a vertical slice level and streamlining the process of making the levels.

Later during production we learned that the combat was pretty weak and shifted more to a puzzle game. By good having a good pre production and plenty of moments in the gym we could cherry pick the levels together with beats that fit right in and delivered a fun gameplay experience.

Continued production to deliver a quality product

Mid-production I had to step in as producer, improving our workflow and updating the scope whilst supporting the team through the last stages of production. 

– Setting up a strike team to address the most pressing tasks and focus on the core playable experience.

– Worked with external animation teams to deliver all needs for our AI and character team.

– Updated the product scope, for example, the level scope, reducing the level count from 12 to 3, and breaking the scope into tasks for the feature teams.

 

Screenshots: