The Sun Shines Over Us Post Mortem

Hello all! I am Lucky Putra from Eternal Dream Studio. This is my first article, and I hope you enjoy my writing. In this article, I want to share some key takeaways from my game “The Sun Shines Over Us”. Hopefully, you will gain some insights after reading this.

“The Sun Shines Over Us” is a mobile visual novel game that focuses on mental health issues, Our goal is to spread more awareness about teen problems and their neuroatypicality. We also want to courage those who are dealing with it by showcasing real relatable common problems typically found in teens and guide them through it. The story had been reviewed and verified by a real certified psychiatrist to make the content as close as possible to subjective experience for players.

It was co-developed between Eternal Dream Studio and Niji Games. The game has already reached almost 500k downloads on Google Play without any marketing funds. Additionally, we have received several awards and nominations, such as the “Best Narrative Game” award and the “Best Mobile Game” nomination at the Indonesia Game Awards 2022. Furthermore, “The Sun Shines Over Us” played a significant role in our selection for the Google Indie Games Accelerator 2022.

The game seems to have achieved many positive results, right? However, no process of game creation is perfect, and I want to share some struggles and key changes during the development process.

1. Messy Code

Numerous crashes and unresponsive applications plagued “The Sun Shines Over Us,” leading to lower reviews on Google Play and a frustrating player experience. The fundamental structure of the game code was messy and even caused crashes in the Unity Editor. Although our new programmer has made some improvements, he is limited by the existing codebase, as the game is already live, and some parts of the code contain essential player data.

Key Changes :

1. Design Architecture code first

2. Do clean code from the beginning

3. Test frequently to other internal team devices.

2. Bad Project Management and Decision-Making

The previous story writer made minimal progress over five months, but we failed to take swift action by either terminating their employment, finding a replacement, or issuing a strong warning. Instead, we waited and excessively praised even the smallest advancements.

Key Changes :

1. Hiring: Do portfolio checking clearly, conduct skill/output test first, hire objectively, have a probation period (3 months), should have an offline face-to-face before hiring.

2. Project Management: Communicate expectations early and have a well-defined scope of work. To have a candidate/ new employee create a timeline of deliverables and progress to report on a weekly/bi-weekly basis. Assign a manager to oversee progress.

3. Firing: Review the progress, and check if the progress meets over 90% of your original expectations that you set in the beginning. Suggest a performance improvement plan for the next 2 weeks. If no change, we find a replacement.

4. I take more leadership responsibilities as a decision-maker.

3. Out of Scope / Scope Creep

The initial plan for “The Sun Shines Over Us” involved a team of 6–8 people, but in the end, nearly 20 people ended up working on the game. This led to an overwhelming workload for the art department and programmer.

Key Changes :

1. Decide the Design Pillars & Game Value at the beginning of the project so we can manage the scope & cut the content that doesn’t matter/align with the Design Pillars & Game Value.

2. Brainstorm & Decide the scope of the game idea and the platform that we want to launch the game into, so we know what we need to prepare for that platform from the content, monetization & marketing plan.

3. Have a decision maker (producer/or creative director) decide if the current SCOPE is within the vision of the project.

4. Lack of Understanding of the Platform

We released the game on the mobile platform without a proper understanding of how mobile games operate, including aspects like live ops, monetization, and the core loop. Most team members were accustomed to playing premium games and had a better understanding of that platform.

Key Changes :

1. Make research and ask other Game devs first about the platform that we want to dive into, by understanding that we know the pro & cons of that platform.

5. Excessive Outsourcing

Almost half of the game was developed through outsourcing to other talents, resulting in increased budget expenditure and a lack of knowledge transfer within the main team.

Key Changes :

1. Add some internal team members with the outsourcing so the member that doesn’t have any experience can learn from that outsourcing person and learn something.

Conclusion

“The Sun Shines Over Us” has been a big success for Eternal Dream Studio, with lots of downloads and awards. However, we faced challenges with messy code, causing crashes for players. We made important changes to improve the code and testing. Our project management and decision-making needed improvement too. We learned to hire better, set clear expectations, and act promptly if issues arise. Scope creep was a problem, but now we focus on our game’s vision and limits. Understanding the mobile platform better is vital for success. Excessive outsourcing was costly, so we now have a mix of in-house and external team members for better learning and collaboration. These lessons have made us a stronger team for future projects.