Slideways was created in the Summer Semester of 2021 with a group of 8 students at the HTW Berlin. In This Game, you climb, swing and slide through a sunbathed, wind-powered city using only your trusty ladder.
Mechanics
In Slideways you mainly traverse the World with the help of your ladder companion. You snap to the closest rail and start sliding in the direction you want. If it isn't the right one, you can always change to another.
During a playthrough, you will discover two different upgrades for your ladder. The first one is springs that allow you to push yourself to new heights, even if there is no rail in sight.
The Second upgrade you could find is two fire jets that give you the power to climb any obstacle. They allow you to fold your ladder while sliding with incredible speed to catapult yourself.
Finally, you will learn to combine your different skills to get to places that were unreachable before. Master your arsenal to overcome any obstacle and find all the hidden Easter Eggs.
Gamefeel
The World of Slideways is a giant Sandbox with a lot of Room to train and test your skills. There is always another challenge or something new around the corner.
Our Vision for the mechanics was a skill-based, not too punishing, and easy-to-learn Movementsystem with a lot of flow.
Development
Because it was the first time for any of us to work in such a big group, we decided to make a game jam before the Semester started. We used it to discover a rough idea of what kind of Game we would like to create. And find out if we would be able to work together.
After a rough start, we quickly settled in with an Organisation of a GD/Dev Department and Art Department with a lot of overlap and interdisciplinary responsibilities. In my role as a Development Lead, I was responsible for the programming of our MVP.
After evaluating our MVP we fell a bit behind in development because the swinging Mechanic was way more complicated than we anticipated. It took us almost until the end of the whole project to get it to properly work but now we are really proud of the final result.
After a long time in Homeoffice, we were allowed to meet up in person again. Daily Covid-tests and a mask mandate enabled us to work safely in the university. Being able to give immediate Feedback in person led to faster iteration cycles and increased morale.
In The Final Stages of Development, we created a lot of content. In this short amount of time, some last-minute changes got implemented. Some of those changes should have been done much earlier but had been overlooked. Even though not everything always went the right way the project was still a big success. I'm very happy with the Game.
Key Learnings
This Project was a lot of fun, and I learned a lot. Especially about how hard the organization of a big Team can be, but also some crucial tips on how to avoid some pitfalls. Through my role as a lead developer, I got my first experience as a decisionmaker and I experienced how important and hard it is to keep good communication to every Team member in a group of this size.
