Technical Design
- Designed, and owned Gameplay Mechanics through full dev cycle: from early pitching & prototyping to late project polish and finishing
- TD and Gameplay systems Owner for 3 Biomes with multiple levels, mechanics, custom level moments and puzzles
- Worked closely with Lead Systems & Technical Designer and Directors throughout the 5+ years
- Designed and iterated on multiple Minigames, Interactions and Set pieces
- Closely worked with Level Design, Animation, FX, Tech Art, Engineering and Combat to coordinate assets, development and maintain consistency
Levels
- Designed Block Mesh Layout for puzzle space Althjof’s rig in Svartalfheim Bay
- Assisted Level designer with pitches and collaborated to improve existing spaces
- Designed micro-puzzles with existing gameplay mechanics
Design Tools
- Part of the team that helped design and inform the development of the new Visual Scripting tools that was then used by the entire studio.
- Guided and supported all other groups on implementation best practices throughout development
Systems & Tech Design Owner: Svartalfheim, Jotunheim, Ragnarok
Realm Highlight
Svartalfheim
As Owner of System and Tech Design of this realm I was involved in early exploration, design & realization of most mechanics, character moments, set-pieces in different capacities. Below are only a few highlights:
Water Geysers
The geysers are a pressure balancing system trying to maintain equal distribution at all times. The system supported individually placed geysers that changed heights based on the states of other geysers in the system and the environment.
States:
- Height: Each geyser was limited to multiples of 3m to simplify mental model and Level integration.
- Closed states: A geyser could be Frozen by the Axe Or Blocked by an external object. Any object could become a blocker or listener to Geysers to react.
Additionally, each Blocker object had a designated weight, that could then be lifted if the pressure of the geyser was greater than its weight. In addition to these, I also created the pre-vis for the blockers.
Water Troughs
The water troughs were a big challenge in development since they were one of the more dynamic, open mechanics giving the player abundant choices.
Flow: The player could freeze them anywhere along the trough which then created a new overflow point. The waterfalls at the end as well as the overflow point could then flow down into another trough
becoming a new water source. We also added “attraction” points at puzzle solution locations for the axe that helped the player not pixel hunt.
LEGO Ideology: My goal for these was always to design them as lego pieces that level designers could connect in any way for the space and they would “just work”. Each piece would essentially perform a handshake to nearby troughs to connect states.
There were many variants including straight pieces of different lengths, junction pieces at different angles and even ones that move.
Train Align and Crash
In this moment, The train needs to be aligned with the help of your companion. The moment is designed to be a similar length no matter what the player does. The player always has a choice on whether or not to listen to Atreus. This creates increasing number of states to handle for banter delivery, while also nudging the player towards the end.
Train Crash Moment
This was a huge multi-disciplinary undertaking. I was involved in early proof prototyping that helped us determine how to break this down. Later on, most of my work involved coordinating all work, making sure characters are implemented, aligned, as well as making the major warps (there are 3) completely seamless.
Whale Island
Along with handling animation states, this took a lot of work by multiple groups to realize in game. One of the features of this space is the ambient movement of the islands. To sell the ambient motion of a large creature, 2 of the 3 islands were always in motion while the player was not on them.