Book of Bhanu is a story-driven puzzle game inspired by Deaths Door and The Last Campfire. I was a member of a team of 7 people; 4 artists, 1 programmer, and 2 designers who created this game for our final year team project module in approximately 5 months. Since then it is also being continued as a passion project b both members of the original team and some extra people drafted onto the project.
Our teamwork, art, and design were major successes in this project as at Game Republic 2023 we achieved:
1st in Rockstar Games’ Best Team award
2nd for Rebellion North Art and Animation
2nd for SumoDigital’s Game Design
2nd for Distinctive Game’s Level Design
I was the programmer for this project, and as the only one I had to try and be very efficient with my time during this project. This meant working very closely with the team to make sure I was able to complete everything the project needed without compromise. This was especially important to the designers, as in the beginning I realised that iteration is what this game would need to do well, in particular around the design and implementation of the puzzles. So I worked closely with them to ensure I had the core aspect of the puzzles right, and then I spent time making them highly customisable to allow them to alter components of the puzzle and iterate without needing me to remake anything unless it was a complete redesign.
I was also in charge of the team’s version control software. I set up two Perforce servers, one for use when at university and one for use when not at university, using AWS as the host due to issues with the university’s firewall not allowing external access. During this I was responsible for the project files in regards to the transfer of work between the servers allowing work to be done smoothly when we had transitions from our time working in person and remote work. Due to this hybrid wok system it was also my responsibility to maintain backups of our work at different stages and access to previous versions proved useful for the presentation side of our university deliverables.