Outland Odyssey
Google Play
Video 1, Video 2, Video 3
For Outland Odyssey, I was initially responsible for designing a system to procedurally generate tile-based open worlds utilising grammars. After the project moved in a different direction to use bespoke linear levels, my focus was changed to the backend systems utilising Azure to interact with in-game currencies, player inventories and item drops.
Outside of my key responsibilities, I interacted with the systems designed by other team members to expand functionality and help with bug-fixing. Examples include: Expanding an arena spawn system to allow for endless, scaling, wave-based combat scenarios, implementing player and enemy attacks, creating tutorials, creating a dialogue system, creating a draw-path-to-navigate-to-objective system, and expanding the analytics system to allow greater flexibility in data collection.
Viking Land
Website, Google Play
On Viking Land, I began as a developer. As part of a five-person team, I was responsible for expanding all parts of the code base. I later became the sole designer responsible for providing the game with general direction, a monetisation strategy, the creation of new systems and mechanics, overall game balance, and continuing to assist with programming tasks.
Credits:
– Art: Simona N. and Mia T.
– Programming: Oscar M. and Ross A.
WURD
Website
I served as the Gameplay and UI designer on WURD, a daily world puzzle game that asks players to think about the letters within words in terms of their positions relative to each other and within the word as a whole.
Banding
Itch.io
My entry for the 2023 Rainbow Game Jam with the theme “Coming Together”. The gameplay is a simple auto-battler system. Putting diverse characters together makes the team stronger, and careful positioning allows characters to take hits or heal in order to overcome tougher monsters. I was the sole developer for this project and was responsible for the design, pixel art, and programming.
Earth Remembers
Earth Remembers is a digital roleplaying experience made for the 2019 Bonn climate summit. I served as the lead designer and the secondary programmer. My responsibilities included the UI wireframe, UX, negotiating with the clients, and the conversion of the DICE climate model into Unity.
Procedural level design experiment
The aim was to discover if players could figure out the levels were procedurally-generated or hand-crafted.
Part 1: Procedurally generate dungeon layouts by creating a critical path with X locks and the generating branches with keys and the ability to loop back for less backtracking.
Part 2: Generate room layouts using Spelunky-style template methods.
Part 3: Create the generated designs in GameMaker and distribute for testing.
In testing, players were unable to determine whether or not the levels were procedurally generated or hand-designed unless the created level defied conventional design in some way.
Monumentous
Initial construction of a level editor. Change to tiles involve updating tile data as well as external appearance with added save and load functionality. Gameplay involves constructing a city using a deck of cards. Players start with a few basic building cards and after placing every building, they are offered a choice of a new one and an action card to add to their deck. Players will be able to develop their deck to their preferred play style with different types of cities emerging.
Reality Shift
A top-down 2D action adventure game that focuses on the player’s ability to move between two versions of the same world at will. Inspired by “Alethic”, a game jam game, and the above level design experiment. Made in Godot.
Lets Bounce Together
My entry for the 2020 Rainbow Game Jam with the theme “Strength in Numbers”. Gameplay involves finding other slimes to acquire new abilities and solve puzzles. Finding more companions enables the player to push larger obstacles out of the way. I was the sole developer for this project and was responsible for the design, programming, 3D modelling and animating as well as composing the music.
This is the Haunted Mansion level I designed for Human: Fall Flat. I started with the Haunted Mansion premise and worked to create puzzles that captured the theme.
Alethic
Alethic my solo entry for the 2017 Rainbow Game Jam. Alethic is a game in which the player can see two worlds and must find the holes in each reality to proceed.
Forestry
This is an experiment in cellular automata. The player’s forest grows independently and they must defend it.
Invasive species convert forest tiles and are driven back by animals.
Fires consume forest tiles but also burn the invasive tiles and are put out by water.
Human settlements send out lumberjacks who are driven back by either water or animals. The settlements grow if left unchecked but collapse without a steady supply of materials.
Alasdair's Game Design 