🐸 Zentera – A Voxel Puzzle Platformer!
Click here to visit our game page!
Click here to check out a video playthrough of the game!
Zentera is a third-person puzzle-platformer where players use an extendable tongue to pull crates, activate switches, and solve physics-based challenges. The game was developed in a custom engine using agile practices across multiple sprints. The project focused on pushing the boundaries of multidisciplinary collaboration—merging level design, programming, art, and sound into a cohesive player experience. With iterative feedback loops, rigorous QA processes, and multiple early access releases, Zentera evolved rapidly into a polished gameplay prototype showcased on itch.io.
🔨 My Contributions
🗂️ Leadership as PR Lead
What it Does: Served as the PR (Programming Representative) lead, taking on coordination and communication responsibilities across the team and with external stakeholders.
Key Features & Challenges:
- Acted as the primary point of contact for programming-related issues, ensuring clear communication between team members, producers, and instructors.
- Facilitated sprint planning, retrospectives, and standups by gathering status updates and aligning team priorities.
- Organized and led PR lead meetings, documented discussions, and helped adapt planning when challenges or scope changes arose.
- Provided transparency on task progress—regularly checking in with team members and maintaining awareness of overall project status.
Impact on the Game:
- Improved team organization and accountability, helping maintain a steady development pace.
- Reduced miscommunication between disciplines by centralizing updates and feedback.
- Enabled faster identification of blockers and risks, allowing the team to address them proactively.
🚀 Release Management
What it Does: Led the process of preparing and publishing Zentera on itch.io, including coordinating page creation, setting minimum specs, and managing marketing assets.
Key Features & Challenges:
- Coordinated with the team to add all members as contributors for direct page editing.
- Collected and curated best screenshots, ensuring coverage of all levels and characters.
- Created the credits table for clarity and compactness.
- Defined and communicated hardware requirements after discovering engine limitations on specific GPUs.
- Contributed to trailer content by creating unique scenes, like the heart effect between characters, to enhance marketing appeal.
Impact on the Game:
- Ensured a professional online presence.
- Facilitated early access updates, reflecting player feedback through changelogs.
- Improved visibility and player onboarding with detailed instructions, visuals, and system requirements.
✨ Particle System
What it Does: Developed a versatile particle system using EnTT ECS and integrated it with Angelscript for artists and designers to use flexibly in-engine.
Key Features & Challenges:
- Modeled functionality after Unity’s Particle System for familiarity (e.g., shape modules, color gradients).
- Supported object pooling to drastically reduce performance costs—fixing issues like laggy footsteps particles.
- Integrated particles directly into gameplay elements (e.g., portals, doors, fire, waterfalls).
- Required close collaboration with artists to match aesthetic needs.
Impact on the Game:
- Enhanced visual feedback, bringing scenes to life with dust, fire, water, and interactive VFX.
- Improved player experience with immediate and responsive visuals, aligning with puzzle outcomes.
🔊 Sound Effects Implementation
To see and hear the sound effects, click here!
What it Does: Implemented FMOD sound events into gameplay scripts, synchronizing audio cues with actions like crate movement, levers, pressure plates, and player tongue interactions.
Key Features & Challenges:
- Collaborated with designers to gather and organize a comprehensive sound list tailored to gameplay.
- Integrated FMOD events into the Angelscript codebase, aligning sounds with visual actions.
- Added footsteps, tongue SFX, environmental ambience, and interactive sounds to levels.
Impact on the Game:
- Provided immersive audio feedback for all major interactions.
- Elevated the game’s atmosphere and reinforced puzzle-solving moments.
✅ QA Process Improvements
What it Does: Helped establish and improve the team’s QA processes to ensure faster, clearer bug tracking and resolution.
Key Features & Challenges:
- Co-created a Discord bug-report channel to supplement GitHub issues—boosting accessibility and response speed.
- Established a structured written QA process (review buddies, build showcases, vision holder roles).
- Provided detailed bug reports with reproduction steps and visual references.
Impact on the Game:
- Increased efficiency in identifying, communicating, and resolving bugs.
- Ensured critical issues were prioritized and fixed within tight sprint schedules.
🐛 Bug Reporting & Fixing
What it Does: Proactively identified, reported, and resolved bugs affecting gameplay, visuals, and performance.
Key Features & Challenges:
- Discovered and documented high-impact issues like missing gate elements, lighting mismatches, and crate collision errors.
- Fixed performance-breaking bugs (e.g., particle systems causing frame drops due to excessive entity spawning).
- Reviewed and tested PRs, giving feedback and suggesting improvements across disciplines.
Impact on the Game:
- Improved gameplay stability and experience.
- Reduced blockers for designers and artists by keeping builds playable and polished.
🎯 Overall Impact
My contributions provided core systems and processes integral to the team’s success:
- Delivered essential technical features (particle system and sound integration) present in every level and central to gameplay.
- Significantly improved QA processes, ensuring bugs were identified, reported, and resolved efficiently.
- Led the release effort, from minimum specs identification to polished itch.io presentation, enabling timely early access updates.
- Acted as a bridge between disciplines—aligning programming, art, design, and marketing efforts for cohesive project delivery.