Games Designer

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Kickman

Kickman is a retro style shooter, but with a twist! Instead of actually shooting, the player must use their arsenal of a series of kicks to fight their way to victory.

The aim of this project was to create a (sort of) shooter, with a medium length level, taking elements mostly from Doom for the interior sections, Serious Sam for the exterior sections, whilst keep a more Quake-like feeling throughout. One of my main ideas for the level that I had at the start of the project was to have this central, focal room (The portal room), that the player would pass through on multiple occasions.

Kickman gives the player three different kicks to use, which are unlocked as the player progresses through the level. One of the main challenges with creating Kickman in this way, was that I didn’t necessarily want the first kick to be the worst, and the final to be the best. I wanted them all to fit a role by the end of the game.

With this in mind, I chose to base designing the different kicks around utility and roles, as opposed to pure damage.

The initial base kick is a quickfire attack that will hit enemies in front of the player. With the 50% additional damage upgrade that the player can find for this kick, this keeps it in line DPS wise with the final kick.

The second kick is built more around utility, and the player will find themselves using it quite often. This is a flying kick, on a 7.5s cooldown. It doesn’t deal as much damage as the other two kicks, but can be used as a platforming tool, to close distance with ranged enemies, or to escape tricky situations.

The final kick is a charge kick. A bar will fill up besides the player’s health as they charge. The kick can be released at any time (Which will deal damage relative to the initial kick, based on DPS), however if the player releases the kick whilst it is in the red zone, they will get an extra boost to their damage, incentivising players to try and aim for that spot whilst adding a little gamification to what would otherwise be a slightly more stale, but still useful charge attack.

For this project I worked on the level design, mesh work, player design and blueprinting, AI design and blueprinting, and most of the sounds save for the music.

Fistful of Dice

Fistful of Dice was an opportunity to explore a side of Games Design that I hadn’t had any experience in creating; this being the completely paper based side of design that can be found in Tabletop Roleplaying Games.

For this project I decided that I would like to create a highly focused RPG based around the idea of what is essentially magic cowboys.

I created a 100 page, 30,000 word PDF of rules for Fistful of Dice, including rules for combat, roleplay, class creation, abilities for classes, a unique upgrade system, lore for the setting, a short starting adventure, and enemy stats for use in play.

Fistful was a great idea to really see what I could do on paper, and I learned a lot about RPG design whilst working on it.

Feel free to read Fistful of Dice here.

Among Thieves

Among Thieves is my take on the Thief/Dishonored formula. The idea going into this project was to create a short level from the ground up, that featured multiple paths and routes to the objective, as the games that inspired this project are well known for that.

I had originally planned to have the character use tools, but changed it to a magic system. This allows the player to teleport around, and with the mantle system that I built will let them access otherwise impossible to reach areas and avoid the patrolling AI guards.

To go alongside this project, I also created the beginnings of a fantasy world. Among Thieves would take place in a city known as North Shore; part of an alliance of City States known colloquially as the Bastard Coast. I compiled this initial information in a starting lore document; and built on it more throughout the year in my own private notes, as I used this world as a setting for multiple tabletop roleplaying campaigns.

Finally, I created a comprehensive Games Design Document to help break down the elements of Among Thieves; including level layouts, inspirations, and mechanics.

Hat Box: The Legend of Boleon the Slime

Hat Box is a small, but polished project created by a team of 6. We wanted to create something simple, but something that was complete, and with a level of polish not usually seen in prototype projects.

The concept behind Hat Box is that you play as a small sentient slime, called Boleon. Boleon once had an amazing hat collection that granted it amazing abilities; however those hats were scattered and lost. It’s your job, as the player to collect these hats. Each of the five hats in the game provide a different ability that will be necessary to complete each level. Another of the main mechanics of the game was one that could be used to help those with motor and cognitive disabilities, whilst still being part of the main gameplay. This was the rewind function. The rewind can be used at any time, to go as far back as the player likes, whilst also being used as a means to complete some puzzles.

For this project, I worked on the initial concepting alongside the rest of the team as we came up with the main idea. After this I worked on designing the traps, and around half of the levels in the project. I also worked on a few other elements, such as creating the rewind post process, and writing the dialogue for Boleon. (Please follow my itch.io link at the top of the page if you would like to play Hat Box).

Neon Heist

During the end of the first year of University, a friend and I worked on a University competition project for over a month. With over 300 entries, and judged by both peers and tutors, ‘Neon Heist’ was awarded with a position in the top 5.

The game was made as both a means to showcase what we had learned, and to improve our skills.

Exterior mesh work, lighting, NPC pathing, and technical blueprints were done by myself.

Heritage: Drowned in Blood

Heritage was my take on a Metroidvania style game. During the second year of University, we were given a framework to improve upon, and to design a level for. Heritage: Drowned in Blood is what came from this, and was designed as a stereotypical vampire Metroidvania.

The objective of the player was to explore their ancient castle to uncover more of their heritage, and take on the powers of their long dead ancestors, allowing them to defeat stronger monsters, and access previously blocked off areas.

Whilst designing the map for Heritage, I put a lot of emphasis in to multiple, distinct areas for the player to explore. As I knew this project would only be a single level, I wanted to spread my wings a little. This led to their being multiple areas, such as the castle exterior, the castle interior, the gardens, and the crypt.

Heritage was completed within a twelve week semester, and I received a first-class grade for this work.

CTF – Twin Keeps

Twin Keeps was one of my first projects whilst at university. We were instructed to create a capture the flag map for Unreal Tournament 4, through the UT editor.

I achieved a first-class grade for this work, and using the different saved instances, assembled a timelapse of the largest changes to the map.

• Strengths: Adhered to UT standards of weapon and item placement
• Balanced map (Between teams)
• Multiple paths of ingress and egress
• Interesting map theme

• Weaknesses: Less chances for interesting gameplay outside on the lower floor
• Long line of sight from the balcony outside each base, broken only by the bridge arch makes it easy for snipers to camp
• The centre section of the map could be smaller physically, but have more opportunities for exciting gameplay

Submerged Seaside

This small, submerged seaside town was created as a chance to work with creating a cinematic video that could flow naturally through a scene, and also to work on a more ‘realistic’ area. Design was also prioritised here, as even on a small showcase video such as this, I believe that everything still needs to make sense, and to have a reason to exist in the shot.

Global Games Jam 2020 – Wonderful World

Wonderful World was our group’s take on the brief word of ‘repair’.

We chose to create a post-apocalyptic farming simulator based around repairing the planet by planting crops. The game is a balancing act between planting money crops, which further damage the environment, but reward more money; and planting environmental crops, which cost a lot of money, but repair the environment.

This is offset by the bandit raids that occur throughout the game, where the player must purchase defence turrets to help protect their crops.

Exterior meshing work (Both farm and wasteland), and general design done by myself.