Level Up Wrap Up
The six-month program of our second-ever Level Up team has come to an end. This time organized in our Shanghai office. An internal company playable saw the light of day, along with new friendships and learnings.
Our journey with Supercell's Level Up Program in Shanghai is drawing to the end and it's time to look back and share some insights and learn from it. Level Up is a program designed to offer aspiring game developers a chance to experience game development the Supercell way, with nearly no limitations. The team gets guidance from experienced Supercellians and are encouraged to take full control of our decisions and make our own moves. The goal is to deliver a playable version of the game by the end of the project.
Game Development
ShipASail is the game we were developing over the past six months. It's designed as a local co-op survival game set on the ocean. Players play as adorable animals, start their journey on the mysterious sea and manage to survive their way out in order to reach the destination. Throughout the game, players focus on expanding their floating home using resources scattered around and keeping themselves well fed to survive the cruel environment. At day, it's starvation and dehydration, while at night it's dodging monster attacks and overcoming challenges.
We got inspired by a lot of survival and co-op games, trying to take the best parts out of them and create an immersive ocean survival game experience on mobile.
We didn't jump right into game development from the beginning, thought. The team felt strongly about wanting to first focus on bonding and exploring. After getting to know each other well, we had a few brainstorming sections to figure out what kind of games we wanted to create and eventually, we settled on a cooperative survival game set on the ocean.
The team has been super efficient and we had everyone involved in decision making. Valuing everyone's opinions equally is important. When we've had differing voives in the team, we tried to balance each of them and take the best out of them. As we progressed, a clearer picture of what the game should look emerged making everyone work hard towards the end goal.
Learning and Growth
It's hard to express in writing what kind of a a profound learning experience this has been and how grateful we are for the opportunity. Everyone on the team is incredibly proud of the final version of ShipASail. From the intense discussions at the beginning, where we debated different ideas, to choosing our current game direction and finally completing it, the team has grown and gained a lot as the game developed.
What makes our happy is the combination of having the independene to create our own game and received full support and mentoring from Supercell. We had mentors from different positions who shared their extensive experience with us. They respected all our ideas for the game and provided technical assistance and sharing Supercell's unique approach to game development.
Besides the mentors, other colleagues in the company were also very interested in our project. Due to the limited number of our team members, each of us had to take on multiple roles to complete the game, tackling many areas we had never studied before. In these unfamiliar fields, we received help and encourament from colleagues who were experts in those areas.
The past six months have been a valuable learning experience for all of us, we believe it equips us with required skills and knowledge that we will carry forward into the future!
- The ShipASail game team