AdviceToolbox
Find a mentor
Reach out to other indie devs
you admire and ask them
for development tips. Their
game’s website will often
have a contact email, and
direct messaging on Twitter
or Facebook also works well.
Keep your email brief, and be
concise with your questions.
Be friendly and professional,
and many developers will be
happy to help you out.enemies will allow you to tune and polish them.
Are they fun to interact with? Do they seem
intelligent? What about your game’s story?
Making a brief cutscene or NPC dialogue system
will allow you to prove out your narrative delivery
mechanics in the context of the game world.
These are just a few examples to consider. You
don’t need to get every planned system up and
running – just the ones that represent the core
aspects of your game.
Another valuable takeaway from a vertical
slice is task creation data collection. After
finishing each component in the vertical slice,
take note of the amount of time it took to
complete it. When you move into full production
and begin building more assets, you can use this
data to more accurately schedule your project.
A vertical slice can also be an extremely
useful marketing tool. Once you’re confident
that the gameplay looks good, plays well, and
clearly communicates your planned systems
and mechanics, you can
record footage from it to
create screenshots and a
trailer. These assets can
be used on your website,
social media channels, and
as the centrepiece of a crowdfunding campaign.
Well-executed vertical slices can also help attract
potential publishing partners, as well as gain
acceptance into console development programs
and curated indie game festivals – all critical to
the future success of your game!
SLICING ANEW
For Anew, we had a list of proposed gameplay
systems, mechanics, and visual goals that we
wanted to communicate in our vertical slice.
Since we’re a team of two developers, it was
critical that each component created for the
vertical slice would end up being used in the
final game. Nothing would be thrown away, so
we needed to work intelligently and efficiently.
We prioritised the design elements that best
represented the larger game we planned to
make: a fluidly animated, responsive player
character; a variety of enemy types; above- and
below-ground gameplay spaces with unique
visuals and play mechanics; pilotable vehicles;
an identifiable visual style; and a story told
visually through playable spaces. All of these
components were created from scratch. Not
only did we need to develop a tremendous
“Creating a vertical
slice forces you to
make your ideas real”wfmag.cc \ 41amount of new things (remember, indie devs are
inventors!), but we also had to teach ourselves
the Unity engine, as well as many other new
tools and techniques. It was an intense process.
We spent approximately nine months working
on our vertical slice. Among other things, game
director Steve Copeland spent a great deal of
time developing critical production pipelines and
development tools that would allow us to make
the final game. His work
touched on almost every
system, including animation,
lighting, audio, physics,
AI, player controls, enemy
behaviours, visual effects,
and optimisations. As art director, I spent most
of my time working on challenges related to
art, animation, sound, story, music, and the
emotional tone of our game. As the game’s
visuals took shape, I ended up needing to create
more art assets than originally anticipated. I also
spent a significant amount of time developing
our terrain creation tools and working out best
practices for environment layout and flow.
For many of the reasons mentioned above,
our vertical slice ended up being a productive
use of time. We built an entire zone around
the environment, implemented and tested
several tools and pipelines, solidified the overall
art direction, and used it to create a variety
of marketing assets which led to a successful
Kickstarter campaign and acceptance into the
ID@Xbox and PlayStation developer programs.
Although some processes and content we
developed for our vertical slice have since
become outdated or improved upon, the
experience strengthened us as developers and
positioned us to create a game we’re very proud
of today. You’ll likely face similar challenges while
producing your vertical slice, but stick with it.
The end results will be worth the effort. The player character’s full
animation set needed to be
created early during our vertical
slice production phase. Marketing assets
derived from our
vertical slice led to
a successful
crowdfunding
campaign.