Shoo, Box! In Progress
You’re a shoebox who loves your owner, but one day, they leave you behind in a hotel. You’ll do anything to reunite, even if that means growing legs and walking out the door! Use special abilities from shoes you find to solve puzzles in this heartwarming adventure.
Development Log
January 2020
Our team loved the idea of a shoebox with legs running around with different shoe powerups. Originally the game was going to be a competitive multiplayer, but we switched gears (shoes?) to a single-player game with a storyline.
We came up with our paper prototype for the first level area in the hotel.
As the UI artist for the team, I sketched out rough ideas for the HUD and menus.
February 2020
Game jam! Awkwardly coinciding with Global Game Jam, we still managed to put together a pretty polished version of our paper prototype. However…it was a little too polished. Our professor would’ve rather seen a broad overview of all of our levels, not just one good-looking room. Whoops.
During the jam, I liked the idea of retail tags for different shoe powerups.
After reaching our third sprint, we built our first playable prototype! The team was very grateful for the industry professionals who visited to give us feedback on our first level. This build also included a tutorial, with lots of elements from yours truly.
With the onset of the pandemic, we transitioned to remote meetings, work, and playtests. Our larger class set up on Discord for sprint reviews, to more easily facilitate streaming and communication.
March 2020
Our team decided to cut the junkyard level due to concerns about project scope. While sad to lose my story ideas it ultimately turned out for the best, as I could focus on improving scenes for the game’s other 3 areas.
Creating the cutscenes proved to be a bigger challenge than I initially thought. When drawing storyboards I put in too many small moving parts and had to cut down my ideas for each scene.