Description

PolterHeist is a puzzle stealth game where you play as a ghost trying to steal priceless treasures from a museum by possessing guards.

Originally created for the 2020 GMTK Game Jam.

About the Project

Made with: Unity

Role: Programmer & Gameplay Designer

Project Length: 48 Hours

This was my first jam experience with a multi-discipline team (I worked with another programmer, an artist, and a sound designer)

After the theme was announced, I worked with the team to come up with a gameplay concept and a theme, after talking for a bit we settled on the idea of a a ghost possessing things in a museuem, jumping between objects on their way to a goal. We had a lot of ideas for mechanics that could make for some interesting puzzles, but ultimately we decided to focus on guard possession in order to keep the scope small enough for the alotted time while still providing a reasonably polished experience. One mistake I think we made in the ideation phase is that we didn’t clearly define the details of the mechanics early on which led to some confusion later-on in the project and resulted in a fair amount of art / sounds that never made it into the game.

On the programming side, I implemented the mechanics related to the levels (Guard Movement, Camera behavior, level creation, etc.), as well as integrating the art and sounds created by our talented team-mates while the other programmer mainly focused on the mechanics related to the ghost. I found working with another programmer to be a bit challenging as our styles often clashed and we stepped on eachothers toes a number of times, even by the end of the project we still weren’t totally in sync and I think it definitely slowed the team down. If I were to do it all over again, I would work either as a solo programmer or with another programmer that I know a bit better.

Though I had my doubts along the way, I’m proud of what we were able to put together in such a small amount of time and I learned a lot along the way.