Our game Overgrown is a fast paced resource management game in which players have to keep their multitude of houseplants alive. The player will do this in a succession of short and increasingly difficult levels until they become a master gardener capable of anything their precious plants require. With short and fast gameplay sessions, Overgrown provides highly engaging gameplay at all times whenever the player feels like playing.
As both the producer and the product owner for the project I had a lot of different responsibilities. I functioned as the Scrum Master for the team: conducting scrum meetings, removing as many impediments as possible while working remotely, and keeping the team on track with our timeline. As the PO I owned the product backlog and was in charge of prioritizing the stories that the leads and I created. I also gave final approval and feedback on all of the projects work. As you may be thinking, the Scrum Master and PO roles are fundamentally in contrast with each other. One wants to limit the amount of stress and work that the development team goes through while the other is usually pushing for as much as possible. Balancing this was something that I do have experience with and throughout the project was consistently getting better at. But for most teams two people should be occupy these roles, for this team that was not the case.
I also had a few other (slightly) smaller roles and responsibilities to fill. I lead the business department: creating competitive analysis, SWOT analysis, and user profiles. I coordinated with our publishing and marketing support to make sure Overgrown was presented to the public in an advantageous way. I lead our user testing efforts by creating forms, structuring sessions, and attending many of those sessions. Lastly, I oversaw the production of our audio assets while working with our Lead Programmer and a contracted Composer.
Overgrown was developed over the course of my senior year in college for a total of 7 months or 2,400 development hours in a fully remote working environment. This project was started by myself and 4 other people in the fall and we grew to a total of 10 people in the spring after being one of eight games to pass though our studio Greenlight process; from a total of 21. Overgrown has been published on Steam and I am very proud of what this team was able to accomplish.