Production Process

We used Scrum throughout the project.

We organised the day-to-day work into Sprints while using the course milestones, presentations, playtests and release deadline as our main delivery points.

At the beginning of each Sprint, I reviewed and prioritised the backlog in Trello, planned the upcoming work and helped the team agree on the most important goal for that Sprint. We held short daily Scrum meetings where everyone explained what they had completed, what they planned to work on next and whether anything was blocking them. I also held separate one-to-one meetings with the lead artist, lead programmer and other team members whenever a problem needed more time than the daily meeting allowed.

At the end of each Sprint, we reviewed the current version of the game, discussed what was working and adjusted the next Sprint. Playtests acted as larger Sprint Reviews, while team discussions and the final post-mortem helped us look at how we were working and what needed to change.

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The development was divided into four main stages:







 

January - February — Concept and pre-production
We started by forming the team, brainstorming ideas and choosing the sketchbook puzzle concept.

During pre-production, we worked on the Game Design Document, Technical Design Document, Art Bible, puzzle concepts, market research, production schedule and budget.

We originally planned a much larger game with several themed sections. The farm would be followed by environments based on space, pirates and other parts of the child’s imagination.

The project initially began in Unreal Engine because it was the preferred engine of our lead programmer. The artists and designer began developing the visual style and puzzle concepts while the programming team worked on the first technical prototype.

Late February - March — Engine switch and first playable version
After approximately one month, we still did not have a working version of the core gameplay loop. This meant we had not yet been able to test whether the main idea of dragging 2D cards into a 3D sketchbook world actually worked.

Continuing in Unreal would have placed the entire project at risk, so we made the difficult decision to switch to Unity. The engine switch meant restarting most of the technical work, rebuilding the repository and adjusting the backlog and schedule. I created the first Unity prototype so we could finally test the central interaction and begin connecting the work from programming, art and design.

We prepared the first playable version for a playtest in March. The session showed that the idea had potential, but it also revealed usability problems and larger issues with the team’s communication and workflow.

After the playtest, I organised a longer team discussion. Everyone had the chance to explain what was going wrong, what they needed from the rest of the team and what we could realistically finish. During this retrospective, we agreed to reduce the scope from a larger multi-section game to a three-level farm demo. This gave the team a clear and achievable goal for the remaining Sprints.

April — Main production and second playtest

Once the scope was clearer, the team focused on completing the three farm levels.

The first level became a simple tutorial where the player places a dog card and watches the dog guide the sheep into the barn. The later levels introduced more cards, more possible placements and more incorrect reactions.

I created a no-text tutorial using animated arrows and cursor symbols. It guides the player through opening the book, dragging a card, placing it and removing an incorrectly placed object. Because the game was designed partly for young children, I wanted the tutorial to work without relying on written instructions. I also worked on the main menu, settings, scene transitions, weather effects, lighting, Steam achievements and smaller quality-of-life improvements.

The second playtest allowed us to review the full progression and decide which usability issues and bugs needed to be prioritised before release.

May — Final Sprint and Steam demo

The final Sprint focused on testing, bug fixing, presentation, documentation and Steam preparation.

I set up the Steam page and coordinated the required store graphics with the artists. I also checked that the project documentation was complete and supported team members with their final reports.

The demo was published on Steam at the beginning of May. We then completed post-release fixes, the final presentation, another playtest and a team post-mortem. The demo is currently available to download for free on Steam!

We held three main playtesting sessions during the project: one in March, another in April and a final session in May.

The first playtest was especially important because it was our first chance to test the concept after switching engines. The session showed that players liked the idea, but the controls and first steps were not immediately obvious. Some players did not understand that they needed to click the sketchbook, drag a card into the scene or remove a card after placing it incorrectly.

Because the target audience included children, we did not want to solve this with long written instructions. I created a visual tutorial using arrows, cursor symbols and animated guidance that takes the player through the entire first level.

Later testing focused on the full progression, puzzle clarity, incorrect reactions, scene transitions and general polish. We added issues to the backlog and prioritised the most important fixes during the following Sprint Planning sessions.

Playtesting also affected the project at a much larger level. The discussion after the first session led directly to the engine-switch recovery plan, the scope cut and the decision to focus on one polished farm section.

Outcome

We completed and published a playable Once Upon a Page demo on Steam within the course deadline.

The demo contains one farm-themed section with three increasingly complex levels. It includes the drag-and-drop card system, correct and incorrect character reactions, a visual tutorial, page transitions, settings, achievements and a fully hand-crafted visual style.

Although the finished demo was smaller than our original idea, it captured the most important part of the concept: watching a child’s drawings come alive and experimenting with the different ways they can affect the world.

For me, the project became my most demanding producer experience so far. I led a seven-person team, handled Product Owner and Scrum Master responsibilities, coordinated department leads, maintained the backlog and schedule, created a budget, managed a major engine change, reduced the scope and still helped the team release the demo on time.