Studio Showcase 3 - Whim Independent Studios

Hi hacknplanners,

In this Studio Showcase chapter, we interview Grover Wimberly IV, Producer / Director / Game Designer at Whim Independent Studios, an indie game development studio based in San Bernardino, California. After delivering their first game for Android, ANTics, Whim Independent Studios started using HacknPlan to organize Selatria, a classic RPG for PC currently under development.

Why did you choose HacknPlan as your project management tool?

I’m known by my friends and team for being a big disorganized mess – Before I was introduced to HacknPlan via the /r/gamedev Reddit, I was just working on features for Selatria as I felt like, and keeping long lists of paper or whiteboard notes on what to do that I’d lose or put off indefinitely. HacknPlan gave the structure I desperately needed in a user-friendly intuitive format that fits indie game developers like me, and I’m happy to say we reached our first major milestone with releasing Part 1 on itch.io this year and releasing on Steam a few weeks ago! New team members have since joined our projects and have picked up HacknPlan and have enjoyed it as much as I have.

How does your workflow look like?

When we started working on HacknPlan, we used our first milestone as a remaining list of what we needed from the first three chapters of Selatria. Since our first major release, each patch and chapter have had their own separate milestones to keep the scope small and reachable. Small victories from completing these reachable milestones will combine together to create a large victory for completing the whole project! Since our game uses voice acting, we have added our own customized category for Voiceover planning. HacknPlan has since become a must in order to keep track of what voices in the game need to be recorded, edited, and implemented. Since we have a lot of characters, we can easily see what phase each character is at in the process.

What are the best challenges you faced while organizing your team?

The greatest challenge we’ve had as a team is keeping everyone motivated during long stretches of the project. Once different assets come together and form a cohesive whole/vision, I’ve found it does wonders in team motivation. I encourage team members to show their work on the project as well so others can get motivated too.

Do you have some tricks or tips from your experience using HacknPlan?

Don’t let your milestones get too large. Chunk large sections into smaller ones. Large lists (at least for me) are very demoralizing. It’s great to see lists empty up quickly, and seeing that progress bar move. It helps motivation.

Which important milestones did you accomplish so far? What are the next steps in your roadmap?

We have just completed our milestone for Patch 1.1 for Selatria which was rolled out to Steam, itch.io, and GameJolt. The current milestone we have at the moment is working on completing Chapter 4.

Do you have wishes or suggestions for the future of HacknPlan?

Keep up the great work, HacknPlan team! No immediate suggestions or wishes for improvements at the time.

More about Whim Independent Studios:

Do you want to collaborate with us and share your experiences using HacknPlan? Contact us.

Studio Showcase 3 – Whim Independent Studios

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