Machine Mind

sMachine Mind has you assume control of three unique remotely controlled drones to infiltrate a sci-fi facility and rescue a friendly drone. Players can customize their drones with unlockable skins and a custom name before they are able to generate their own 4-character code and share them with others. Before playing, other can enter a friend code which lets them rescue the drones of their fellow players for bonus rewards and unlocks.

Conception

Machine Mind was initially an idea I pitched about a single player heist game where the player felt like a commander of a group of drones who assisted in the operations of carrying out said heist. The pitch started out as an idea tailored for a design prompt by Certain Affinity as our group was interested in having our project sponsored by them. To the team’s surprise we were sponsored but not by Certain Affinity, we became sponsored by Ubisoft. Machine Mind has since evolved in a plethora of ways and went from an action heist game to a stealthy rescue game that includes a friend code-sharing social mechanic as requested by Ubisoft’s design prompt.

Development

The team for Machine Mind started out with 5 members and it only reached 7 at about 5 months in where we chose to collaborate with 2 sound designers to ease the workload on one of our members. Machine Mind has been one of the most formal projects I’ve been a part of and although it is my final game project during my time at Sheridan, nearly all the work for this project was done outside of class. My responsibility for Machine Mind started as a gameplay programmer for two of our unique drones but after our gameplay fundamentals got off the ground, the group needed me to move away from gameplay programming and move into mostly programming A.I. for our guards. I enjoyed working on the gameplay for Machine Mind but no one else on the team was confident enough to undertake A.I. which left me as the team player to step up and do what no one else wanted to. Machine Mind has had myself and the team run numerous playtest sessions, we attended biweekly scrum meetings with our sponsor and we’ve had to work out the entire scope of production for our game while adapting to the frequent outside disruptions to our plans.

Result

Machine Mind was successfully completed and showcased at the 2021 XP Game Summit.