Using a deck builder as a metaphor for growing and changing as a person, Midwest Goodbye asks you to relive various key moments throughout your life with your family. While you might’ve wanted to get out of a conversation with your grandma quickly at first, taking your first steps into the world on your own might leave you wishing you’d spent a little more time talking with her. 

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This project was made during the summer of 2025 by a team of 18 Bradley students. This project was our 6-10's after our 9-5's. It was a way for us to learn and try new things outside of the pressure of a grade in class. For many of us, it was our last project before our senior capstone. 

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What Is My Role?

As the Team Lead of Midwest Goodbye, I hand-picked every member of the team. From there, I acted as the producer and worked to keep our project in scope and in line with our goal of trying things we're scared to do with the pressure of a grade. ​

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My responsibilities include:​

• Running team stand-ups

• Creating milestone deadlines

• Run retrospectives

• Delegating tasks 

• Road mapping

• Running team meetings

• Collaborating with leads

• Meeting 1 on 1 with ICs

• Writing dialogue 

• Playtesting

• Giving feedback

• Making the trailer

• Managing the company

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Much of my time on this project was spent working with teams to create task lists for each milestone. From there, I checked in with individual contributors in 1-on-1s to ensure that nobody felt overworked.

I believe that no one should lose sleep over this project and will always find a solution that lets people put their health first. After all, it's still their summer. Multiple team members told me they were glad to work with me as they knew I respected them and trusted them to communicate and get their work done on time and with high quality. Even when things go wrong and life gets in the way, knowing I would find a solution instead of causing them stress to get things done brought my teammates relief.​

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Part of my solution was to wear multiple hats. When multiple members of the narrative team felt overworked writing dialogue in addition to this discipline work, I stepped in as an extra writer to lighten their load. When programming needs people to bug test, I'm the first to jump in and both playtest it myself, as well as find playtesters outside our team.