“Home Is Where The Hearth Is” SCAD Game
The last day of the Gaming Fest was a success, with plenty of very insightful presentations. I attended The Making of “Home is Where the Hearth Is” panel. This award-winning game consists of being stranded on an island in the middle of a stormy ocean; the player must stay warm by collecting resources and upgrading the player’s home. The further the player goes, the more they realize that these Hinterlands are not quite as empty as they first appeared. The fate of these lands now rests in their hands. Alumni that were part of this project, Nathan Cartwright (Project Lead and Narrative Designer) and James Hill (Technical Artist), talked about their experiences and challenges while creating this game for their 20-week senior capstone project.
The panelists mentioned that the project all began with a game pitch in their Intro of Game Design class. The design was not created with a full intention of development. “It was just practice,” said Nathan. In their senior studio class, they took the opportunity to develop this concept fully. They got organized with ideas during the pre-production stage and established the naming conventions. Since they had to start the project in an entirely virtual environment because of the pandemic, they mentioned that google docs and discord were life savers, great for communication and organization. In this phase, they established a naturalistic color palette for the game to sell the critical question: What makes the place you live a home, and why does it matter? Further on in production, both panelists mentioned that an Agile Workflow permitted them to change and iterate the game as it was being created. They could see the whole process, making sure that it was unified.
During the event, Jack Mamais, professor of the Gaming Department, joined the conversation by sharing his experience in the project as a guide to the team. He emphasized the hard work that the students went through to create this game. There was an art team of only two to three people within this project, unlike Zoellie (previous senior project), where there was an art team of 40 people. He also mentioned that part of the great result of “Home is Where the Hearth Is” was because of Nathan’s previous experience with creating games. The professor was amazed that this game was fully developed with 10 hours of gameplay, which was not seen before because usually, senior projects are 30 mins to an hour demo. The students echoed the professor’s words when saying that they grew as artists during the six months that they worked on the project.
One of the biggest challenges that the team faced was having to develop this project during the pandemic by embracing the remote experience. During this time, they could see remote development evolve because, at first, they started entirely virtual and then moved on to a hybrid workflow. Nathan said this was a dramatic shift because he was so used to working in person. On the other hand, James mentioned that one of the biggest challenges he had to face and something he wished he had approached differently was the code base organization. It got messy during production. Nathan also supported his answer when it comes to organization. He wished he had put more effort into researching the plugins needed to implement the dialogue within the game. They would have saved time. “When you are going to paint, It is better and easier to buy a paint brush than build your own” -Professor Jack Mamais.
At the end of the event, they highlighted that what sets a game apart from other media is bringing the audience into the experience. Story-wise, every decision you make has the power to change the story. In addition, they provided advice to the audience:
“Critique is going to hurt. If somebody says that something is not working within the game, pay attention to them.” – James.
“Bring your passion within the game” -Professor Mamais
“Practice, practice, practice. It makes perfect, and will take you where you want to be.”-said Nathan.
The students were grateful for the opportunity that SCAD provides within classes. The institution’s approach prepares students to experience the real world and industry workflow. They were also thankful that they could develop the game entirely and put out a finished product with a great team.
“Home is Where the Hearth Is” won Best of Show and Best 3D Game at the 2021 Entelechy awards. It also received multiple nominations from The Rookies in 2021. We want to congratulate the team for their fantastic work in creating this successful game. You can see the trailer and gameplay video by checking out the YouTube channel and the website below: