Lane Casters was an arcade bowling game that some MSU alumni and I worked on starting in 2025. Our UI artist, JJ, pitched the idea, and we all fell in love with the idea right away. We spent the next four months having a blast with the simple but absurd premise of a bowling alley run by cheating wizards. Our working prototype is also up on Itch.io if you want to try the game for yourself.
Meet the Team.
My Contributions to Lane Casters
In the grand tradition of Indie development, I wore many hats across the project - we all did to some degree. However, as things progressed, the producer hat became the most worn, as it was the most needed among the team. We had other designers who were more familiar with the engine, and the team decided to push the story to the back burner as priorities shifted around the midpoint of the project. Fortunately, it's a hat I've worn before and am quite comfortable with.
Roles and Deliverables
Lead Meetings
Managed Backlogs
Set/Maintained Goals
Producer
The majority of my responsibilities as the producer were in maintaining Scrum practices during development. We began with Jira to help keep track of tasks, but when we exceeded the team size for the free trial version, I migrated everything to a Google Sheet. The transition was painless and, in all honesty, I think the team was glad Jira exploded on us.
QA Testing
Pin Layout Documentation
Secondary Gameplay Loop Documentation
Game Designer
Click Image to see Full Document.
My responsibilities on the design side of things were more on the planning side of things. I started by outlining what our secondary gameplay loop would have looked like and how it would have interacted with the primary. Then, when the team decided to downsize that aspect of the game, I focused on creating the various pin arrays that were then handed over to Gabe to implement. Once in the engine, I then tested them for balance, so Gabe and the others could focus on implementation. Below are my testing notes, along with links to the documents containing the secondary gameplay loop and the pin layouts.
Narrative Designer
Fleshing out characters
Linking Primary and Secondary Loops
Writing Barks and Sample Scenes.
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A lot of my early responsibilities as a Narrative Designer led to my work on the secondary gameplay loop as planned. I intended for the secondary loop to be where the majority of the story was location, along with the player's interaction with the story, so that the primary loop could focus on gameplay. These two loops were, however, designed to complement one another: with the player gaining new special balls, powers, and cash for upgrades in this secondary loop to then use in the primary.
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I also wrote all the in-game text, from barks to the menu text, and even a few unused sample scenes, so team members could get a better sense of character personalities. Barks and other essential game text are what I pivoted to once I (as the producer) decided to scale back work on the secondary loop so the primary could be as polished as possible before our deadline.
