Portaplay / Bird Island
The Current
The project includes all parts of the process from early design to the finished product.
Concept
The Production Plan
The Current is an epic sci-fi deckbuilder roguelike I worked on as a Project Manager. The game’s concept centres around a woman journeying to a strange and dangerous archipelago in a desperate attempt to save her tribe.
Set in a future shaped by a massive environmental disaster, The Current explores themes of adaptation, migration, and humanity’s hopes and fears surrounding climate change. The production spanned a year with a core team of 16 people, though some team members joined and left throughout development.
From the outset, our goal was to create a deckbuilding roguelike that stood out through its narrative depth, strategic card gameplay, and replayability. The game follows Farah, a migrant from a dying Moon Colony, as she explores mysterious islands, battles rogue machines, and uncovers the secrets of a fractured world.
The production was divided into three key phases: pre-production, alpha development, and demo polish. During pre-production, we solidified the core pillars of the game:
Classic Deckbuilding with a Twist – While we drew inspiration from genre staples like Slay the Spire, we introduced unique mechanics such as modular grid-based combat and persistent faction reputations.
A Sci-Fi Migrant Story – The narrative explores themes of displacement, cultural exchange, and survival, with choices impacting relationships with different factions.
Discovery Through Retrial – Procedural generation ensures no two runs are identical, encouraging players to experiment with different card synergies and story paths.
By the alpha stage, we had implemented the core gameplay loops: exploration, turn-based combat, and meta-progression. The final demo showcased a fully playable island, complete with combat encounters, narrative choices, and upgrade systems.
Development
The Team and My Role
Developing this game required close collaboration between designers, programmers, artists, and writers. As the project manager, my role was to ensure smooth communication, maintain the production schedule, and align the team with the game’s vision.
One of my primary responsibilities was breaking down tasks into manageable sprints, ensuring that no single discipline was bottlenecked. For example, while the design team prototyped card mechanics, artists worked on environmental assets and character models, and writers developed branching dialogue.
A key challenge was balancing scope. Early on, we had ambitious plans for dynamic AI encounters and complex card interactions, but through iterative playtesting, we refined these systems to ensure they were fun rather than overwhelming. Regular team syncs and playtest feedback sessions helped us prioritize the most impactful features.
Team planning
We adopted an Agile framework, working in two-week sprints to maintain momentum and adaptability. Each sprint began with a planning session, where we defined achievable goals—such as implementing a new enemy type, refining the card upgrade system, or expanding narrative choices.
Daily standups kept the team aligned, allowing us to quickly address blockers—for instance, if an art asset was delayed, we could temporarily substitute a placeholder without derailing progress.
One of our most valuable practices was bi-weekly playtesting. Early builds revealed that some card combinations were too dominant, while certain encounters felt unfairly difficult. By iterating based on player feedback, we smoothed out pacing issues and ensured that strategic depth, rather than randomness, dictated success.
The biggest lesson from our Agile process was flexibility. Some planned features, like a complex “energy recharge” system, were simplified after testing showed they added unnecessary complexity. Meanwhile, unexpected successes—such as the explorable POI system—were expanded upon due to player enthusiasm.
Release
Final production
The completed demo offered players a 6+ hour experience, introducing core mechanics while leaving room for future expansion. Key highlights included:
Strategic Deckbuilding – Players assembled a deck of attack, defence, and utility cards, arranging them on a grid to form powerful chains.
Dynamic Encounters – Combat, social negotiations, and environmental challenges provided varied gameplay moments.
Narrative Choices – Dialogue decisions influenced faction reputations, unlocking new cards and story paths in subsequent runs.
Persistent Upgrades – Between runs, players spent scrap to unlock new cards and modules, allowing for deeper customization.
Feedback from testers was overwhelmingly positive, particularly praising the fusion of narrative and gameplay. Some noted that the early-game difficulty curve could be smoother, which we addressed by tweaking starter decks and encounter balancing.
Conclusion
Lessons and Future Vision
This project was a testament to the power of Agile development, interdisciplinary collaboration, and player-driven iteration. By staying flexible and focusing on core engagement loops, we created a demo that not only functioned smoothly but also left players eager for more.
Moving forward, if we ever return – expand the game with additional islands, deeper faction mechanics, and more card synergies.