Free Shipping Weekly Dev Log
- Erica Mitton
- Mar 3, 2023
- 8 min read
Play Free Shipping or read this Dev Log in it's original form here!

Week 1 - Ready and Research!
This week, I researched a political topic in hopes of learning about a certain issue to develop a game idea about this issue.
I researched the topic of female frontline workers, and how the Covid-19 pandemic has affected the already prevalent issue of income inequality. Frontline workers, especially women were affected greatly by the pandemic as it made previously existing issues much more damaging.
I gathered research from different organizations advocating for equal rights, most of them fighting specifically for women and income equality. These organizations led me to multiple published research reports about how the pandemic has affected these women on the frontlines. I decided to base my research in the United States, as that is where most of the research I found was based.
Many of the authors of these reports had a background in researching income inequalities and women's rights and expanded on their studies under the lens of the Covid-19 pandemic.
I gathered all this information and came to certain conclusions discussed in my report. It was very interesting to research this topic, as the income gap is already an issue in today's society. It was interesting to look at this issue in the context of the Covid-19 Pandemic.
Week 2 - Presenting (dun dun dun)
This week I prepared and presented my game pitch about my research topic.
I took the interesting aspects of my topic and tried to think of a game idea. I struggled a bit, I wanted to make an idea that wasn't too on the nose of what my topic was, but also make it engaging for a player. I thought of political type games I've played in the past and thought a lot about Papers Please and how they conveyed a political message. I took a lot of inspiration from that game and how they subtly conveyed a message to the player.
I was nervous for my presentation as I haven't presented in front of people in a really long time. I had taken a lot of time to review my presentation and understand my topic and game pitch so I felt ok presenting. It went well and I got a lot of great feedback and ideas from my peers!
Week 3 - A New Team Approaches!
This week, my team worked on our Team Charter to sort out the roles each of us would fill in the game's development and how our team would function. We came up with the team name Chungo 64 and got most of the Team Charter finished. We also worked a bit on our GDD and have plans to flesh it out further. Right now everyone has a defined role in the project and we know what direction we'd like to start heading in for the game's development.
We have a certain idea of the different moments of play in terms of a Beat Map that breaks our game up. This helps everyone in the team to have an understanding of how the game is divided up. We defined what the core experience of our game should be and the message we were trying to deliver which we will convey through gameplay. As a team we want to continue to focus on developing this player experience to reflect the message of our game and the topic we are trying to address.
Week 4 - U & I = <3
This week and reading week, the team focused on finishing up the bulk of our GDD and preparing our presentation for in class this week. I filled in the audio sections and UI design sections and presented them to the class.
Since I wrote about the in-game UI, I needed to think about the player and how the on screen UI would communicate certain important elements to them. I reflected on where certain UI elements should be placed on screen to most benefit the player and allow them to understand information quickly.
With the user in mind, I was able to design an interface that would be easy to understand and used easily by the player.
Week 5 - The Goal?
These past few weeks my team has been focusing on what we want our final milestone to look like at the end of this semester, as well as our schedule for the rest of this semester and what next semester will look like.
We decided as a final project at the end of second semester we wanted a good portfolio piece in the form of a polish game demo. As for the rest of this semester, we wanted to finish up our proof of concept and documentation as well as some base elements for the beginning build of our game.
We worked to make a outline of our schedule and deadlines for the rest of the semester and vital tasks we needed to get done for our proof of concept.
Finally we discussed our scheduling plan during class and got some really good pointers to move forward with.
Week 6 - Planning Ahead
This class will prepare me for next semester as my team knows exactly what we need to do to get to know next semester.
This week my team finished up the majority of our planning with our Gnatt char and Trello board. This helped us visualize the production schedule for next semester as well as due dates and deliverables. We also finished our production breakdown which really helped visualize tasks for each section of the project.
I also created a BGM track for the main menu screen and am very happy with how it turned out. I think it really captured the mood and feel kf the game and I am excited to create more music for the game.
Week 7 - Warming Up for Work
After the winter break our team was able to come back together and reflect on the pre production planning we had completed last semester. As a team we had created a solid plan last semester for what we would complete in the winter term. We had a thought out Trello board and Gnatt chart to help us keep track of this plan and stay organized.
I find myself personally struggling with trying to get myself back into 'work mode'. After coming back from a break it is hard to get myself back into gear again and I don't want to let my team down. Hopefully with all the planning we have completed from last semester it will be easy for me to keep track of my work and not fall behind as I am getting adjusted to the new semester and other assignments. I don't want to let my team down by not doing my part and creating a solid schedule last semester should help me keep up!
Thank you past Erica, sincerely, current Erica :)
Week 8 - Making Music and Much More!
Our team has been working hard to slowly put together some of the tasks we have completed for the game so far. In last week's in-class workshop, the team reviewed what we had done so far, and what we need to do to get to our desired end goal at the end of the semester. It was nice to see everything all laid out to get a good visualization of what needed to get done to make our game complete! We took out a couple tasks such as the acid rain to take some weight off of Emma as she is our only programmer and I will try to help as best I can with UI implementation. We made sure to review our Trello and Gantt and we should be able to complete everything for the end of the semester.
So far I've worked on some music and sounds for the game and have most of the SFX we will use in game and for the UI. I also have a couple of the tracks completed and plan on working and refining the music I already have to make sure it still fits the theme and tone we are going for.
Week 9 - Fitting In
After the results of our first playtest, we have been able to take in certain changes we need to make to the game. The demo we have built is still in it's rather early stages and doesn't have any final touches such as art or sound yet and hopefully these first few playtests will help us get the core mechanics down and theme of our game solid before moving onto these aspects. The playtests have given us valuable information on our map size and UI and we have been able to update more finalized UI and are moving towards filling up the map and making it less empty.
I'm finding it a little difficult in that sense to find where to fit in my contributions. I have sound and music but as I said above, for now we are mainly focusing on the mechanics and theme of the game. It feels hard but at least we can work on the foundation of the game and make sure its solid and reflects out theme. Then I can start to add in my sounds and music.
I'm going to continue to refine the music I've made as my Sound Design class has given me some more insight on creating music and sound for games so I want to change them up a bit. We will continue to document and playtest and hopefully start to get our game closer to the final product!
Week 10 - Taking a Step Back
Over reading week and design week production on this project sort of took a pause. The team enjoyed the break over design week and completed tasks at a slower rate and was too busy during design week to really continue any work. This should be ok as we have our Trello board to keep us on track as well as our Gantt to make sure we are progressing well!
After design week and during reading week I tried to work a bit on the narrative of the game. During playtesting, there was some confusion on what quest items belong to what NPC. Taylor worked on some art to help define these characters even more which should help with the distinction between quests. I worked on creating some NPC profiles to help distinguish these characters even more.

Kitty's Profile
I also worked on the secret quest dialogue as its something we need to add to the game to really drive our core message home. Therefore we needed to write the dialogue for this secret quest!

Hidden Quest Dialogue
Week 11 - Polish, Polish, Polish!
This week we conducted our final playtest of our improved level. We realized in class that we had focused heavily on using the past playtests to see if the mechanics in our game worked and bugs we needed to fix. This means the last thing we added and tested was the main theme of our game and making sure it came across to our players. Thus, this final playtest was very important to determine if this was the case!
In our final level for playtesting, we had all the core elements of our game (mechanics, UI, quest items, etc) and finally got to add the final art in. The game really came together and looked so much more finished once all the art was added in!

Free Shipping's Map
During most of our previous playtests, players said that the map was too large and empty. Funnily enough, with all the art in, players liked the map size much better despite it not being tweaked! The assets added in really filled up the empty space and made it feel less large since there were buildings, roads, and other elements taking up space.

Playtest feedback on map size
Using all the other feedback from these tests, the team will continue to polish the game and add in any last minute elements. For example we didn't actually have a "you win" screen so I have created one which will be added into the final game!
Week 12 - The Final Week
This was our final week to tweak our game and make our presentation and make sure everything was set to go! We reflected on what we've done these past few months and are keeping in mind our post mortem. Overall, I am very pleased with what we have made and our whole team is proud of our game! I have learned a lot over these past few months especially about production and documentation. I am happy that I was able to expand my sound design skills as it is something I love doing but haven't always taken on in a project. I loved making SFX and original music for the game. I am really happy with our team and our dynamic and I think we worked really well together to make Free Shipping!
I'm glad I got to work with and get to know all of my team members more over this project and am so impressed with all the work they've done. Thanks Chungo64 for a great year!! <3
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