Tools UsedUnreal Engine, Pivotal, Perforce, Google Sheets, Google Docs, Adobe Premiere
RolesScrum Master, QA
Detailed Info
Communication
Clearly communicated meetings in advance.
Kept meetings to the point.
Checked up on individual team members to detect problems faster.
Organised and managed Slack for all team members to use.
Documented meetings, discussions, and daily stand-ups.
Quality Assurance
Set up a bug tracking system in Pivotal with all necessary formatting. This was explained to all team members individually, making sure everyone was aware of how this worked.
Set up a system to log and keep track of test plans. For instance, the programmer finished the work on the UI and requested I test it with keyboard, controller, and mouse.
Reported over 60 bugs and points of improvement into the Pivotal system.
Trailer
Came up with the concept for the trailer, keeping the surreal humour alive.
Created a storyboard with key scenes that would fit well.
Recorded placeholder scenes in the game to start editing early on, as the final art was not implemented yet. This allowed me to receive feedback early on without too much hassle.
Edited the recorded scenes of the trailer in Adobe Premiere.
Please note that all screenshots/footage reflect the work of the entire team, not just me.
Game Trailer
I came up with the initial concept for the trailer, did the recording, and did the final editing in Adobe Premiere!
Overview
The Key Tax is a humorous First-Person puzzle game that satires on the non-sense of everyday bureaucracy. Set in a late 1960's office environment, the game offers a seamless narrative experience of which absurdity and surrealist humour are its strong points.
I was a part of a 16 student team at the NHTV University of Breda, making the game as a case study for a new academic research in development by Dr. Mata Haggis 'The Taxonomy of Keys'.
I joined the team as Scrum Master and part-time QA tester. During my time as Scrum Master I was commended by my team for announcing meetings clearly in advance and keeping them to the point, checking up on individuals once a week to find any possible bottlenecks, and for being well organised and easily approachable. Most of the communication was done over Slack, which I also used to announce meetings and other important information in. It also facilitated daily stand-ups, general communication, ways to receive feedback, and memes — which were kept in the appropriate muted channel.
The amount of work I got to do for QA was unfortunately quite limited, but I did manage to set up a bug report system, an easily accessible test plan for others to request tests from, and brought up over 60 bugs and points of improvement within a limited amount of time.
In the last two weeks I also took upon the task of creating a trailer, as it was one of the project's deliverables and as a Scrum Master I was well-aware that the artists had their hands full. Allowing others to continue my QA work part-time gave me enough time to concept, record, and edit the footage for The Key Tax trailer. It was important to me that the trailer conveyed the game's absurdity and surrealist humour as well as possible.
My name is I'm Tristan and I'm from the Netherlands. My early hobby managing gaming servers and communities sparked my passion for creating games, sites, and other types of digital content. I then went on to earn a BSc in Creative Media and Game Technologies at Breda University. I have been working at Spectral as a front-end developer since 2019.
