At Enjmin, the second year is all about the project: we gather in teams of nine, with at least one person of each class, 2 game designers, 2 coders, 2 visual artists, 1 sound designer, 1 usability expert, and 1 project manager. We have 5 months (from October to March) to produce a playable prototype and a game design document. We're free to choose any technology we want. Even if the project may not be developed much further, the ambition must be the same as for a commercial game. There are three major milestones where the concept of the game and the prototype are introduced to professionals through a speech covering the gameplay, the visuals, the sound and the marketing.
The game we're working on is a PC multiplayer strategy game, which privileges planning and macro management over reflexes and micro management. Planning, constructing and training will be done during the night time (opponents can't fight), whereas fighting, exploring and gathering of resources will be done during the day time. Each player will be given the same opportunities of customization of their units, a bit like in a role playing game.
Tuesday was the first milestone, and we showed an early version of our project to a bunch of pros: Jordan Mechner (Prince of Persia), Frédéric Raynal (Alone in the dark), Serge Hascoët (Chief Creative Officer at Ubisoft) and other French game developers. We haven't done as good as we wanted to. Next time we're gonna concentrate even more on the quality of the speech itself, as it's the most efficient way to make professionals want to know you better.