Search: Final Pitch Presentation
Search: Visual Design Guide
Search: Testing Plan
Project: Cooking With Karl, 2024
7 people, 6 weeks
Primary roles: Producer/Manager, Game Designer, Narrative Designer, Level Designer
As the lead producer and team manager, I had a similar job to my role on "Search". However, this time, the team was bigger, so I had an assistant manager who helped me set up Jira and took meeting notes each week. Because I had less on my plate, I started checking in with people 1:1 in order to figure out their emotional states regarding the project. Because of this, I adjusted the scope week-by-week to better balance the team's workload. This resulted in a very healthy working environment and helped boost team morale and communication.
I took on the narrative design of the game fully. The prompt for this project was to make a fun, educational game about a different culture for third graders. I wanted to make a script incorporating aspects of the language, but it was also not too wordy or hard to follow. This resulted in simple dialogue between each mini-game, which worked well with the game flow.
As a game and level designer, my main goal was to make a game that kids wanted to play. I thought about what I found fun at that age, and incorporated it into the systems, mechanics, and level design.
Tools: Confluence, Jira, Agile Game Development, BitBucket
Project: Search, 2024
5 people, 4 weeks
Primary role: Producer/Manager, Level Designer.
This was my first collaberative project being the "Producer". This role was very comfortable for me, twice a week I scheduled planned out, and led team meetings in order to productively progress our game. As the producer, I made sure the Confluence was set up, and easy to use. I made presentations every week to update our professor on our week-by-week progress, and put together the final presentation with the help of input from my team mates. I also made testing plans and forms for our game testing sessions.
Outside of produing, I was the team's main level designer, meaning I used the systems the character designer set up and made puzzles and environments that utalized the character mechanics and established narrative through environment.
I also helped out with the more simple programming so that our programmer could fully focus on the more ambitious aspects of our code.
Tools: Confluence, Jira, Agile Game Development, BitBucket
Cooking With Karl: Final Pitch Presentation
CWK: Game Document
CWK: Level 2 Design Document
CWK: Level 2 Game Loop
CWK: Testing Plan
CWK: Game Script
Project: Secret Signal, 2024
1 person, 2 weeks
Primary role: Sole Game and Narrative Designer
This was a solo project that I had two weeks to concept and complete. I decided to map out the entire game in a flowchart since the game wasn't supposed to be super long, and I didn't want to lose track of where I was in Inky.
This flowchart was amazing for remembering where I was and what still needed to be completed. Knowing where I needed to go also helped with any potential writers block. This is something I now try to do for any game that involves narrative.
Tools: Inky, Lucidcharts, project managment