Candle Knight – A Top-Down Hack-and-Slash Adventure
Candle Knight is a project currently in development by Out of Seats Studio, a team of 18 members working like an independent studio. It is a hack-and-slash game where fire means both life and death. As a candle warrior, the player must battle wax monsters and manage their health, which steadily declines from the constant consumption of their flame. To survive, the player must steal wax from enemies to restore health, all while navigating the dangerous and atmospheric halls of a long-abandoned wax factory.
The game is being developed in Unreal Engine 5, targeting the PS4, over the course of an academic year, aiming to deliver 10 to 15 minutes of polished gameplay. The game is designed for mid-core players who enjoy atmospheric, isometric hack-and-slash games like Hades, Hollow Knight, and Death’s Door. Players will face a high-risk, high-reward challenge, using the flame in combat and puzzles, with a unique mechanic where the flame itself becomes both a resource and a challenge.
In this project, my responsibilities include:
- Organizing and leading a multidisciplinary team, ensuring smooth communication between departments (game design, art, programming, and marketing).
- Managing the project timeline using tools like Jira and Excel for task assignment, time estimation, sprint planning, backlog management, risk assessment, and cutting plans.
- Facilitating communication through Discord, including with our remote marketer who communicates exclusively in English.
- Preparing presentation materials and reports with Photoshop and PowerPoint to communicate progress and team status to academic supervisors.
- Applying agile production methodologies, including SCRUM, to structure the workflow effectively.
- Coordinating code freezes for each milestone to ensure timely delivery of a polished and bug-free product.
- Presenting the game’s progress and key features to a large audience in English, improving my public speaking and presentation skills.
This ongoing project has been an invaluable experience in official project management, allowing me to strengthen my leadership, organizational, and communication skills in both French and English. Collaborating on Candle Knight as part of the Out of Seats Studio team has allowed me to refine my project management skills while working alongside a talented and dedicated group of peers. This experience has strengthened my ability to contribute to a cohesive, high-quality production within an international and highly collaborative environment.