Summary:
“Jumpdrive Studios is a small team that is enthusiastic, knowledgeable and passionate about the game they are making with a strong sense for the art direction, story and gameplay experiences they want to deliver. Square Enix Collective is very happy to support the team’s crowdfunding campaign and we believe that they have the skills and capabilities required to make the game they’re describing in this pitch.”
Full Assessment Report:
XO – Jumpdrive Studios
Before any project can be supported through funding by Square Enix Collective, senior development staff at Square Enix will perform a Team Assessment, which looks at the skills, tools and experience the team already has, plus what funds raised will be used on, the development timeframe, and so on. This is followed up by a call or visit to the team, after which the Assessment Report is created based on some of the details shared.
Please note: featuring a game on the Collective campaign page IS NOT a guarantee on the part of Square Enix that Jumpdrive Studios will deliver what they say they want to – the developer is entirely responsible for raising and spending funds, and creating the game; but we have checked the team and believe that they have the capability to build the game they say they want to.
Team
Jumpdrive Studios is based in Oregon, United States and currently consists of five people internally, plus outsourced development as needed. The key team members include: Brian Jamison (producer, art director and designed); Corey Warning (marketing); Justin Pando (lead developer); Dominic Mandy (tech lead); and Brian Davis (3D modeller).
Tools
XO is being built with the Unity 5 engine and plug-ins, game assets are authored using Photoshop and 3DS Max. The team have proven content pipelines and are actively building content that can be seen in game, they continue to develop and improve these pipelines.
Funding
The funding target of USD 40,000 is intended to see the game development through from its current state (see Progress below) to the full launch. Based on our evaluation of the team, and the assessment of work remaining, we believe this is a realistic budget; additional funding will allow the team to add more content and polish to the game overall.
Progress
Most game features are functional and playable, the team is focussed now on building systems to procedurally drive these features and deliver infinitely varied game-play randomly generated so every game is different. The team wish also to add extra features based on how well they hit their funding goals. 50% of game art is complete while music and audio development is early in development.
Assessment summary from John Lusty:
- Using Unity3D to build the game means that the team have quickly made an impressive start to development and proved out the broad scope of the game.
- The game’s art style lends itself perfectly to the theme of the game and the sci-fi stylistic approach reduces the time to create assets while maintaining quality.
- The team is a mix of seasoned industry veterans and new talent, and all are obviously passionate about and believe in the game that they are making.
- Much thought and planning has gone into the design and the team have a well-defined plan of what they want to make and what they want to achieve.
- A common problem with games that include procedurally generated content is for unexpected bugs to also be randomly generated. But the engineers have built a set of automated tests that will run constantly which, in addition to traditional testing, should ensure high QA standards.
- The team is setting themselves some very ambitious targets but are very focused in their development. They understand well what are the crucial elements to achieving success and this approach should ensure they deliver the highest quality game possible.
Square Enix Collective is happy to support Jumpdrive Studios as having the ability and expertise to deliver the game they say they want to build. However, it must be noted that Square Enix cannot offer any guarantee on funds pledged, as both the money raised and game development process is the full responsibility of the Jumpdrive Studios team.