Games 

The Work

Developed from my design, the original pitch was "a simple-but-fun-with-friends arena fighter with several minigame variations". I asked the other devs to come up with ideas for the minigames and they did, in the end two of five game modes being my idea. The development operated with the same procedure throughout: I encouraged everyone to recommend things in their respective fields they'd want to do and have in the game, and then shaped everything into a coherent vision. I led the team of seven through the initial development time of 8 short weeks (only two of the weeks had all the working days available for various reasons). Some refining work was done in the following months.

As with the game modes, I asked the artists to come up with level themes, characters and weapons, as long as they filled the requirements: characters and weapons have to be interchangeable gameplay- and animation-wise and have to be wacky and suitable for kids, the level themes are only backdrops for arenas, etc.

As the characters were designed by the artists and the game has no story (there's no in-universe reason other than "games" for the characters to be fighting), the writing I did consists mostly of loading screen gameplay tips, though I did write some backstory-tidbits for the characters, similarly displayed in loading screens.

The Work

My grandmother was, just like Anna's, the best at finding four-leaf clovers, and thus an inspiration for the whole game, gameplay-wise. Picking up clovers was the initial idea for the design, and then I let slip the dogs of narrative design. There needed to be a reason to pick the flowers up after all. As a lead designer I also managed the team of six, which, to be honest, didn't need much managing.

The core team was four developers: me, one artist mainly on the environment, one who focused on the character and control rig work, and the third artist doing most of the animations and 2D art. In addition the environmental sounds and music were commissioned from an associate, as was the voice talent for the player character.

I wasn't the only one doing programming, but I did the main gameplay features.

For the visual side I wanted to freshen my modelling skills and ended up doing the greenhouse and its contents (except the actual plants), the lawn mower and the flower pots.

I directed the voice talent with written directions, as she did her own recording work.

The Work

This project was an interesting one: it was based on an existing design and prototype, with carte blanche to tweak everything if needed. There was even voice acting recordings already done. So naturally I decided we would do a remake of a game that doesn't exist, taking the core ideas and the vision and then redesign and rewrite everything from there. We even scrapped the voice lines.

We scrapped the voice lines, because we had to scrap the script. The original was just dialogue between two people with no interaction. I felt the narrative throughline of the game needed player input. This and the fact that we altered the story details resulted in me rewriting the script, simultaneously adding a gameplay puzzle element to the dialogue.

I designed the layout of the levels and the artists did most of the set dressing.

As a 2D artist I did some texture design and the graphics for the bulk of the memos discoverable in the game.

We had one programmer (Unreal Blueprints), three 3D artists and me. I made sure everyone had things to do and knew where we were heading. I also organised playtesting sessions and made tweaks according to feedback.

The Work

Since the game was made for a client from client's very detailed design with little room to deviate, pretty much the only design aspect that I was left with concerning the narrative was the pacing of the level and some environmental storytelling. I instructed the level designers with decisions concerning the narrative.

It was known before teaming up that most design work wouldn't be ours to tweak, and the team emphasised the visuals. The team consisted of seven-ish people, since the work of some artists was divided between this and a sibling project. I made sure that everyone was on the right track with the vision, had a clear understanding of their own current and longer-term workload and was ready to tackle any problems they'd encounter or questions that would arise.

In the end the client was satisfied with the result.

The Work

The team was rather large for a four-day jam game so a team-leading role is essential, especially as most if not all the assets were made from scratch during the development. The team consisted of, in addition to my varied roles, three 3D artists, a visual effects artist who also did sound design, and a programmer. My job as a lead was to make sure everyone was on the same page with the design and visuals, ensure everyone had something to do at all times and that they knew what that was, and to support the team and solve problems should any arise.

As the design itself was a joint effort between team members, my job as a designer concentrated mostly around mechanics of the spires and the trees the player plants.

I made the cloud cover environment, which gives the game a very unique look.

As a programmer I helped the lead programmer with some aspects of the systems I was more familiar with, but my role was definitely a supporting one.

The Work

In this project my narrative and lead designer and writer roles were not only intertwined but one and the same, The puzzles are classic adventure game puzzles so they are more about a narrative than gameplay logic, the same goes with the scenes (what would otherwise be considered level design) and dialogues. For the artist I did basic layout sketches of the scenes to start from.

I directed the music artist to produce music in a style that I wanted and then let him do his thing.

As a 3D artist my job was half to ease the workload of the main artist, half just because I wanted to. The 2D art that I did were the UI and icons, and compositing the images for intro and outro sequences.

I programmed the game in AGAST.