God of War: Ragnarok — Rajul Ramchandani

Technical & Systems 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

Realm Highlights

A closer look at two realms I worked on across the project — click a realm to switch views.

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:

Gameplay Mechanics Technical Design and Implementation Narrative Gameplay Design

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.

Variants

There were many variants including straight pieces of different lengths, junction pieces at different angles and even ones that move.

Trough Gates

Challenge

Part of developing the puzzles was to eventually introduce a second way to block water in addition to the axe. While this significantly increased complexity of the implementation, creatively, our exploration was to figure out how the dwarves might have blocked the sluices and how the player can leverage it without using the axe.

Form Factors and Interaction

This led to exploring different predictable form factors. The goal here was to find a form factor that physically made sense while also feeling predictable and intuitive to the player. Most importantly, it had to not use the axe.

Gate/Blocker Tech Demo

Placeholder text — additional water trough content coming soon.

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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.

Placeholder Slide

Placeholder text — additional geyser content coming soon.

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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.

In Jötunheim, my focus was on Angrboda — Below are a few highlights, including a small optional minigame I'm especially proud of.

Companion Scripting Narrative Sequencing Narrative Gameplay Design

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Rock Skipping Minigame

When my lead mentioned that we wanted a rock-skipping moment early on because of the narrative beat it was tied to — but we saw an opportunity to keep it alive as something players could return to it right after that story moment

Finding the Mechanic

How does one build a game out of skipping rocks? To me, my main approach was breaking it down into what you think about when skipping rocks in real life and what mental models you create. Goal: was to skip as far as you can. Skill: based on angle and when you release the rock. Early on I had decided with my lead that angle was going to be too nuanced so the game would abstract that away. Which left me with timing - a perfect concept to build a minigame around.

The Challenge

It launched with no real mechanic and nothing to actually aim for since it was part of a cinematic style moment. Most of my work here was about restraint. I couldn't really get new animations, and needed an end goal to show you how far the game allowed you to skip the rocks. So I took an existing art asset - the clam and made it the mechanic's goal (which was later added earlier in the level to introduce it to you). Then, I built the whole thing to stay true to an optional, discoverable style — very little hand-holding relying on implicit cues, more about letting players stumble onto it and figure it out for themselves.

Iteration & Emotion

I went over multiple iterations with the Game Director as he really wanted to capture the feeling of skipping rocks like when we were kids. This led to sequencing specific banter for Angrboda to tease you and skip rocks herself to show you what was possible and to hopefully motivate the competitive side of the player. After multiple playtests, I added specific rumble cues, visual glints on the rocks, animation speed ramping etc. to show you when the perfect time was to release the rock

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Angrboda's Pathing & Gameplay Timing

A large part of my work in this realm was making Angrboda feel organic rather than scripted. While collaborating with the level designer and narrative designers, we wanted her to path through the space and link her animations to the player's own movement. It involved warping her at key moments so that she's always leading, while also maintaining comprehension of her path. This was all in service of landing key gameplay moments: her catching you when Atreus falls, appearing at the end of a tunnel crawl so you can see the first time she attacks an enemy, etc. no matter how someone chose to explore. This timing was narratively important so her presence never felt like it was waiting on the player.

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The Medallion Race

Worked on Angrboda's race sequence tied to the medallion, timing her performance against the player's pace to keep the moment feeling alive rather than scripted. The goal here was to always have her win the race but provide key moments where the player felt like they could win. A lot of the work was to never have a moment where you could see Angrboda do something that was so "unfair" in order to avoid the player feeling like the game wants her to win. This kept things organic and kept the player immersed in the race.

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