Summary

• Designed and worked on new characters

• Including designing new 5-Star character Doctor Octopus Classic

• Rebalanced existing characters

• Designed new live events

  • Including Spider-Man: Homecoming boss event Spider-Man vs The Sinister Six. Designed Doctor Octopus boss encounter, widely praised as the best of the event

• Scheduled and ran live events

• Used analytics and player feedback to drive design

Details

Marvel Puzzle Quest is a free-to-play game for IOS, Android, and PC that lets you form a team of your favorite Marvel heroes and villains to duke it out in match-3 battle action! It features live PVE and PVP events.

I worked on Marvel Puzzle Quest as a design intern designing characters and events, as well as helping keep the schedule of live events running smoothly. I designed Doctor Octopus Classic, a new 5-Star character for the game, as well as giving input on other characters being designed. I created a new special PVE event for the release of the Agent Coulson character and worked on various other events. I worked with another designer to design the well-received Sinister Six boss event to tie into the release of Spider-Man: Homecoming. The event contained six bosses, and the Doctor Octopus boss that I designed was widely praised as the best encounter of the event. Along with new content, I also rebalanced a number of existing characters based on player feedback and gathered data.

summary

• 3D level design

• Encounter pacing

• Environmental storytelling

• Lighting

details

Nevermore Keep is a dungeon for Skyrim housing a coven of warlocks performing human experiments and dark rituals. Nevermore Keep features various enemies to fight and treasures to find. Curious or lucky players may even discover the hidden altar and be rewarded with some extra treasure. There are plenty of enemies to fight so exploration doesn’t get dull, but not so many as to overwhelm a player. Each room serves a purpose and enemies go about their normal tasks until interrupted by intruding adventurers.

Summary

• Exercise to design an entire game played with only one button

• Goal was to have as little text/direct tutorial as possible

• Mechanics taught through level design and audio/visual queues

Details

I designed Space as a challenge to myself to make a game that uses only one button. Since the controls weren’t complicated, I also hoped to teach the player how to play without a direct tutorial.

The player’s ship constantly falls, and rises up when the space bar is held. While space is held, the ship also charges an attack. When space is released, the ship fires it’s attack and begins to fall again.

Through the title “Space” being displayed at the start of the game, players are encouraged to try pressing the space bar and see how that moves their ship. The design of the first level forces the player to fly up long enough to see their weapon charge, and then release to drop down and see how shooting works before any enemies are encountered.

As the game progresses, new twists are added, such as enemies that shoot back and enemies that move, with bosses on each level testing the players skill at navigating the newly introduced challenges.

I did all the design, code, art, and sound for Space and released it on itch.io in October 2018.

Summary

• Winner of MassDigi 2016 Game Challenge:

  College & Indie Serious

• Language-learning horror-mystery game

• Created by a team of four in Japan

• I designed puzzles and a zoning system to allow for modular design

Details

Chinmoku is a language-learning horror-mystery game where you must learn the basics of the Japanese Hiragana alphabet in order to solve puzzles and fend off monsters. Using an android phone connect to a PC via bluetooth, players can learn to write the Hiragana characters and must learn to write quickly and clearly to survive.

I worked with a team of four on this game while in Japan. I served as the puzzle designer and game play programmer. I designed puzzles to both be fun diversions and to help reinforce the learning aspects of the game. I programmed a system to allow for easy and quick creation of new puzzles, along with a zoning system to allow for modular placement of game play elements including puzzles, new camera angles, and other interact-able objects. I also designed and coded various in-game interactions, such as a desktop computer which the player character can use to read in-game email messages.