Laura DeCarli's Portfolio

Group Project Management

I've undertaken the role of project manager mainly for two projects in groups of four: Goldash (2022) and my current thesis project, which is a two-players couch co-op game. While in other projects, such as Bulb's Escape (2023), I undertook a design lead role that required helping the project manager to define the project's goals and tasks.

Although my primary focus is game design, I've grown to appreciate these kinds of roles as they allow me to help the people in my teams with good organization and communication skills.

Current Project

Working Title: Co-op Thesis Game

About our thesis project:

We are writing our Master's thesis on game design processes and methodologies, and to test out our process we decided to create a 3D two-players couch co-op game.

The player characters are two very specialized wizards: one can use magic to pull objects towards them while the other can push them away. They need to work together and coordinate their magic to solve puzzles and opening paths within a castle.

We have completed the prototyping phase and are now in the process of completing the hand-in version for our thesis, but have plans to further polish and expand the game after our studies.

What did I do for this project as project manager?

Before the start of the project, I talked with the team about what their personal learning objectives were for the thesis, what kind of roles they wanted and/or felt comfortable covering, their general availability, work boundaries and what they expect from the other team members. I also took the time for us to define what our objectives were both for the game project and for the thesis' paper.
I created an online workspace, using Miroboard for everything related to the game project, Notion for everything that is related to literature research, the thesis' paper and reports, and Discord for remote communication.
I created a structure for tracking tasks (kanban inspired paired with a timeline), and defined them in collaboration with the other team members.
I kept track of the project's scope, checking-in with our tech lead Hallur and our lead artist Hanna to make sure that we do not overextend our resources.
I planned and conducted meetings when needed, making sure that each of them had a goal and a structure to keep them short and focused.

I've also participated in this project in the roles of gameplay designer, level designer, UX designer and UI designer.

Co-op thesis team:

Producer:
Laura DeCarli

Tech Lead:

Hallur Kristinn Hallsson

Art Lead:

Hanna Katriina Salomaa

Game Designers:

Laura DeCarli & Mikkel Iuel

Videogames

Goldash (2022)

About Goldash:

Goldash is an endless runner mobile game created by Qizue Team for DBGA's online courses in Game Design and Game Programming.

The player plays the role of Trasher, a cleaner robot tasked with collecting the trash under the city of Goldash.
During the run, the player has to jump to navigate the environment and to defeat hostile robots.
However, jumping too much can cause Trasher to overheat, and eventually and explode if they don't cool down by releasing energy by falling on enemies or with ice cubes.
They can also pick up consumable power-ups that will help them in their run, which can be upgraded through the in-game shops by spending the gears gained from collecting the trash.
In addition to collecting the trash, the player can also complete various achievements and gain more gears in addition to character skins to personalize Trasher.

What did I do for this project?

I designed and organized the virtual workspace of Qizue Team with a Discord Server for communication, Trello boards for dividing tasks, Doodle for scheduling meetings, a Google Drive archive for documentation and assets, and a YouTube channel to archive playtesting videos.
I organized and directed the team meetings.
I kept track of their teammates’ work and made sure that all deadlines were respected. Since we worked remotely it has been very useful for us to do have a channel for simple daily stand ups to communicate with the other team members what we did the previous day, what we were planning to do on the current day and eventual issues that we were encountering with our tasks.

I also worked on this project as game designer, user experience designer, QA and art director.

Qizue Team:

Game Programmer:

Cristian Ghiorzi