For almost two years, I was part of the team that developed the Augmented Reality (AR) game called Marshmallow Mystery. It was the brainchild of the theater group GRIPS from Berlin Germany. Their kids program “Rakete jetzt!” imagined the story of a summer camp, where mysterious things are going on. They drew the prototype for the map, did the voice acting and even doubled as the characters from the game. Their idea was that the story should become an interactive and immersive app for Android and iOS, such that other children can play what they imagined.
When the project was outlined, their project manager approached me and asked me if I would like to volunteer as a software developer. All and all the project was supposed to be small and unpaid, but also only for a couple of hours of work that were estimated initially. But as for every good IT project, the scope became huge and the resources were sparse. This had as consequence that the project felt for a long time like it would never see the light of day.
The start however was good, lots of constructive meetings, lots of exciting ideas as well as positive energy and some early prototypes. But that motivation was only short lived. After a couple of months, the software development came to a standstill. Mostly, because the development team was overwhelmed by the amount of work it would take to get this project done, as well as the unrealistic deadlines. More and more time passed by, and fewer meetings were held by the developers because no progress was made. On the content creation side, things were looking better. Progress was slow but definitely there. The concept and story was done, the 3D models came along nicely and the audio recordings of the children sounded awesome.
After more than one year after starting the software development, not a lot had been archived. I felt really bad. So much time was invested by all of the other people but no playable prototype was in sight. Only a huge collection of assets, waiting to be turned into a game. I felt like that needed to change. After all, I said I would do it. The existing code base however made debugging near impossible so I asked the other developers if they would mind if I started from scratch and then I got going. At this point, I had no idea how much work actually had to be done to turn everything into the game that all of these people had in mind, but I was committed.
So I got to work. In the beginning only a few hours per day but then for a couple of weeks, I put all of my energy into this project as I saw it slowly coming together. The script for the game were a solid 80 pages of text that had to be translated into an enormous state machine. All combined with AR, multiple scenes, stages and different times at which content could be found and interactions be triggered.
When I started to post regular updates on my progress, the game designer and one of the GRIPS responsibles got back at me and also started helping by testing and building all the required Animations to make even better progress.
There was one more important deadline. Since the funds that were required for this project (e.g. to print the physical maps which doubles as markers) came from somewhere, there were people expecting results as well. And after all this time, for that day, we actually managed to have a prototype ready that allowed for a complete playthrough. One and a half years after the software development had started.
After that, I had to start working full time on another project but the game designer kept the good pace going and published the game to the App Store as well as the Play Store. It also got shown off at a game fair where a lot of positive feedback came in.
Klick here to get to the project page
In the end, more than 18 people worked for almost two years on the game & assets. 8 kids and 3 adults lent their voices to the characters. Approximately ~900 commits were done to the production repository of which ~300 were code commits, of which I did a good ~230.
So if you have an idea for an awesome game with innovative game mechanics and are looking for a committed developper, feel free to hit me up.
