During our senior year at DigiPen, the three of us developed a game called P.H.L.O.P. (Physics Has Limitless Observable Possibilities). P.H.L.O.P. is a physics-based game in which the player uses a few basic widgets to create complicated machines to solve puzzles.

We were a small team of three, enrolled as students in the Real Time Interactive Simulation program, so our human resources were limited. One of our goals was to keep the scope of the project manageable, which we accomplished by creating a game that was light on content (but highly replayable) and required few art assets. The complexity of the physics, graphics, and interaction in the game left us with little time to devote to the artistic side anyway.

As DigiPen students, all of whom are required to complete a senior game while also finishing core coursework, we were tasked with not only coding the game, but developing a schedule in which to complete it, too. Going through this process gave us great experience for our future jobs in the industry (we're all employed now) because we ran the full gamut of game development, starting with game design and technical design documents, which flesh out the "what" and "how" of the game. We also set milestones, complete with checklists of the features that should be implemented by those deadlines and a description of how the game should then play. And on a weekly basis, we had to present producer reports to our game professors about each person's recent accomplishments and tasks for the next week.