I think for this project we bit off more than we could chew. It’s so incredibly hard to make a video game, especially one that is good. We all put in an insane amount of work to create something we find worth it. Near the end, when all of it came together, it was so incredibly satisfying and gratifying to see that all of our work wasn’t for nothing: we actually made something that feels like an actual video game! I’m incredibly proud of all of us for achieving this. Among ourselves, we kept up clear communication and managed to distribute tasks well. I was in charge of making the maps, and I definitely underestimated the amount of work required to make something I’m okay with and be able to breathe and balance it with other life responsibilities. I have always struggled to balance my desire for perfection and giving myself enough time to rest. Needless to say, this project was a lot of work and really tiring, but also extremely worth it. I think if I were to do this again, I would urge us to start actually developing the video game earlier in the process, or make less of the stuff used from scratch. It’s always going to take more time than you think, even if you take into account potential delays in your schedule (which we did—but it still ended up being more than we thought). Next time we should be a little less ambitious. Still, I’m really proud and grateful to have done this project with such amazing people about what I think is an important topic. I’m so happy about how it turned out, and hopefully other people enjoy Camilla’s story as much as we do.

I was very excited to start working on this project. I’ve always liked playing video games and was curious about the process of making one for my own. I’ve always seen video games as a unique medium through which so much more can be achieved because of its immersion and interactivity, and the idea of conveying important messages through them excited me.

During the first months, I focused on my research on emotional immersion in games, while collaborating with my group on brainstorm sessions for our game. Working together and sharing thoughts on narrative, worldbuilding and mechanics was very fun for me. Especially the sharing of similar experiences and struggles with our femininity when growing up felt empowering to me in a way. To see that I was not alone in my struggles and that others were able to relate to my experiences helped me a lot in the process of conceptualizing the game and the message we wanted to get across.

When we started making the game, I took on the role of programming in RPG Maker MV and sound design. Since I had never worked with RPG Maker before, it took me a while to get used to its ways. After getting a bit more knowledgeable with it, I really started to enjoy seeing all the elements come together through my programming. One major obstacle for me was overcoming challenges through trial and error. Although this process was discouraging at times, the feeling of accomplishment and pride upon solving issues made it worthwhile.

Even though this project has been stressful at times, I really enjoyed it. I learned a lot about working together and game design, but also more about myself and my interests. I’m incredibly proud of my group members and grateful to have gotten the opportunity to create this together.

I had no experience creating any part of a video game before taking on this project. Though I was excited to be a part of this, it was hard for me to know where to begin. Luckily, some of our group mates who had more insight into the process guided this. At the start of this project, we discussed which themes we wanted to incorporate in Camilla’s story. To do this, we shared personal stories about what it felt like to grow up as a woman for each of us. These moments felt healing, empowering and intimate, and made me greatly trust all of my group mates. It also made this project a lot more personal, after all; we all relate to Camilla in some ways.

One of the most challenging parts of this process was the fact that almost everything I did was new. At some point, I felt like I had to learn a new skill almost every week. Through trial and error, I learned to make sprites in pixel art, animate, create UI and build a website. Because these were new skills, it often took me a long time to finish projects. Combined with my debilitating perfectionism and procrastination, this sometimes put me in a crunch for time. Weirdly enough, this took a turn when I faced my greatest challenge about three weeks before the deadline; Krita crashed and almost all of my work on UI from the last month got lost. Though this caused a lot of panic at first, I think it might have been a blessing in disguise. It forced me to stop overthinking everything, and just finish elements. Before, I would always want to touch it up just a bit more. And it turned out that even without being as much of a perfectionist as I would like to be, I was still happy with the elements I finished.

The same goes for the website. This was supposed to be a job for two, but circumstances made it that I had to do it alone. I found it especially daunting to make creative decisions that would impact Dreamweaver’s image. I had to do this when creating UI, but the website somehow felt even bigger. After all, everyone who plays the game, sees the website first. Admittedly, I might have been wise to ask for help earlier on. However, knowing that most of my group mates were just as busy, or even more, made that even more difficult than I usually find it. This leads me to say that we did take on a task that might have been too big for the short time we had. However, I’ve always felt supported by my group mates, and couldn’t be more proud of them. I enjoyed this process despite the stress, and will cherish everything I learned as well as everything we created together.

Before starting this project, I had never worked on a video game and was fairly unaware of what it took to make one. In the first two months of the research seminar we mostly worked on our research papers, which was straightforward enough. The following three months were a lot different. The first few weeks we mainly brainstormed about the narrative and characters together, and tried to figure out a cohesive plot. In the early stages I worked together with Mieke to come up with a narrative for the third phase of the game, but after a while, my main role became character designer. I really enjoyed this, as I’ve always enjoyed drawing. I hadn’t ever drawn pixel art before, though, so there was a bit of a learning curve. This was especially tough with the animations. Even though they were simple it was tricky to figure out exactly how to get it to look natural, and how to make it all work in RPG maker.

The main obstacle I faced with this individual task was that I underestimated the amount of time it would take, a problem exacerbated by my somewhat chaotic work ethic. I had to retrace my steps a few times, but in doing so learned to be more organised in my process later on. Another lesson is the importance of lunch and breaks, which we initially forgot about during our hours-long weekly meetings.

Overall I’ve really enjoyed the entire process, however stressful it was at points. I’ve learned a lot about what goes into collaborative projects, and it’s incredibly exciting to see our game go from a vague idea to an actual video game. I’m very happy to have worked with such an amazing team, and am really proud of what we achieved.

The idea of being able to tell a story through an interactive medium is what made me excited about this project from the very first time the word video game was mentioned. Everyone was excited and motivated to get started with this project, which made working together so much easier. If felt very empowering to come together in this group of wonderful people, be able to share our own experiences and be met with understanding and recognition, and enthusiasm to make it into a story to also relay these feelings to other people.

In the middle of our research seminar, I had to undergo surgery and was unable to do work for almost three weeks because recovery was a long and painful process. When I came back, the others, had made a lot of progress. So when I started to take on tasks, I felt so eager to prove myself helpful and part of the team that I was scared to admit that I struggled with some things. An example of this was when I excitedly volunteered to make a map for the game, without realizing how much time and effort it was to understand how to make and then actually make a map. I struggled longer than necessary with this, because I wanted to prove myself a valuable member. Of course, the most logical thing would have been to mention this earlier than I did, because when I said I was struggling everyone was nice and understanding and we divided tasks differently so I could focus on things I did actually know how to do and help out with the website.

Afterwards I talked to some team members individually where I talked about feeling like a bad team member because I felt like I wasn’t pulling my weight. Turns out that the people I felt had played an integral part of making the game, were feeling the exact same way and assured me that I definitely wasn’t a free-rider. But for me it was also eye opening that even though we were very communicative about the practical aspects of the game, we could have talked more about the pressure of taking on such a big project in such little time. Especially when there is so much to do. I personally at least know I underestimated what goes into making a game.

This project has known a lot of ups and downs for me. I was very excited by the idea of developing a video game with my group, especially because I had been studying video games in a very theoretical way but never really saw the practical side of it. Through this project, I learned how much effort it takes to fully develop a functioning game, and how difficult it can be to get a certain message across to a player. My first struggle with the project came when we decided on a topic to do the game about. Although I was born a girl and I identify as a woman, I had never quite faced the struggles most other women have, the struggles we were meaning to use in our game. This was already a very intense learning moment for me, because my personal lack of understanding for these problems meant I had to commit to a story that I couldn’t picture myself in fully. I learned a lot from my group members though and trying to see through their eyes helped me in gaining a better understanding of our topic. Around the halfway point of the project, I faced some large personal issues, which meant I couldn’t attend university for a few weeks, and I had to take a break from working on our project too. It was very difficult for me to explain to my team what exactly was going on, but once I could, they all responded very understandingly, and it did teach me about the importance of communication when working on such a large-scale project. Making a video game has therefore been an enormous learning curve for me, in more ways than one.