Illustration by Michael DeForge
Changelog
Alonso Canales, Aman Kapoor, Andie Zhou, Isaac Taylor, Michael Kiang
Alonso Canales, Aman Kapoor, Andie Zhou, Isaac Taylor, Michael Kiang
Changelog - Trailer
+In one or two sentences, describe the main themes present in your game.
Changelog is a game about what it's like to make games—"art about art," if you will. At the same time, its story centers neurodivergent characters and examines the ways in which even people who are neurodivergent can end up harming each other in the same ways that neurotypical people do and how these issues often stem from a lack of mutual understanding.
+What was the inspiration of the game?
What made your team decide to make this game specifically?
We were inspired to create Changelog because we wanted to see a game that talks about the process of game creation. We also share an interest in unusual/unconventional narrative design, and thought that "telling a story through evolving builds of a fictional game" was a fascinating and unique creative challenge to pursue.
+Were there difficult moments when developing the game? What led to those difficult moments? What did you learn from it?
A recurring problem we ran into was the issue of updating the writing in the game. We could have created a tool to do this dynamically, and without having to create a new build every time. This would have taken a lot of time--time that we didn't have--but saved lot of time in the long run. By the time the writing had scaled up to the point that such tool would have been helpful, we did the math and realized that we simply didn't have enough time to create one. This experience gave us valuable experience into considering when and how to implement tools into our workflow; while it's impossible to recognize, with 100% accuracy, when "making a tool" or "refactoring part of the code" is going to be "worth it" in the end, we certainly have a better grasp on such dilemmas now.
+Were there features you had to remove, and if so, what were they and why were they removed?
One feature we had to remove is a second spell slot for the intra-game. It would have made the combat of the intra-game a litle more interesting and dynamic. We're still happy with the final project we're bringing to Spring Showcase, but it would hve been nice to realize the gameplay of the intra-game more fully.
+Talk about your teammates! What was everyone's role?
Aman was in charge of the art direction for the game, specifically all of the visuals, 3D assets, visual effects, and animations that appear within the "game within a game" (hereafter "intra-game"), to which he also contributed significant programming. He also edited the trailer and created the Changelog logo and worked on the PSX styled look of the game.
Andie is our narrative lead and wrote almost all of the text that appears in the game. She tackled the job of making sure all of the narrative content connects to each other in a meaningful way and makes sense within the context of the player being able to experience the story non-linearly.
Alonso is our creative lead and handled almost all of the programming having to do with the simulated desktop computer interface. He made sure that decisions we made regarding the game stayed true to the original vision and made sense within the context of our creative challenge.
Isaac was our lead programmer, specifically on the intra-game. In addition to coordinating programming efforts with Alonso, he's responsible for the original premise of the intra-game as well as its modular magic system. He also assisted with writing Kento's dev logs.
Michael was the project lead and made sure everyone stayed on task and was aware of deadlines. He sent lots of emails, filled out lots of Google Forms, took meeting notes, and put together presentations and promotional material. He also assisted with writing Eren's dev logs.
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