GamesGames
AnnaBelle
AnnaBelle is a narrative puzzle game in which players need to establish Anna's innocence in an identity switch scheme.
The development process was largely focused on narrative puzzle design and the establishment of intimacy between players and an untransparent, untrustworthy player character. The exploration of this relationship was based on findings from my 2023 Master Thesis (link to thesis on blog?) about the alignment of player and player character motivation and resulted in the expansion of my framework.
This game was developed between July and November 2023 as part of my final Game Design Masters degree submission.
Sugar Burn
Sugar Burn is a narrative game about the destructive processes behind perfectionism, displayed via the art of candy making.
As players are walked through the day of an Amezaiku (Japanese candy making) artist’s stall at a fair, they are forced into an unbeatable, cyclical compulsion that evolves from the strong desire to perfect an art form. Loss of passion and the abandonment of mental and physical health are central to the thematic exploration.
This game was developed between April and June 2023 for the Game Design Masters course.
The Exorcist
The Exorcist is a VR narrative and combat game inspired by Japanese and Chinese ghost stories and was made as a collaborative project (credits below). My roles in this project included producer, programmer, level designer, as well as assisting with narrative design.
The main challenge during the development of this game was the tutorialization of VR hand tracking mechanics, as well as their integration and contextualization into the narrative of the game. We used a 4 - act structure to help players navigate the space and mechanics step - by - step.
No country for
This game was made in response to a game jam brief asking for a Twine game in 2022 as part of the MA Games Design course.
The story I wrote centers around the concept of generational conflicts. Using a poem – an older medium of text – inside a game supports this tension. The poem I chose, Sailing to Byzantium by W.B. Yeats and Yeats’ persona are used and reframed to create a dialogue between an old man and a young university student, both of whom struggle to relate to one another in a drastically changed world.
The game has 3 different endings based on player dialogue choices: A “cannon path” and an “aggressive path” that both see an alignment of perspectives through resolving conflict, and a “passive path” that leads to continued misunderstandings and distancing of the two protagonists.
Draft 15
Draft 15 is a platformer in which players can change platform colliders and resolve "glitches" by solving small puzzles and was designed for my final BA (hons) project between December 2021 and June 2022.
The game features a subtle meta - narrative in which a rookie game designer abandoned their project during development, leaving the player to navigate and glitch themselves through the unfinished skeleton - levels.
Because Draft 15 uses a lot of different kinds of collisions and was very reliant on physics, I spent a lot of time refining the player's state machine, both on paper and in code (see pictures).
Netted
This project was made in response to a game jam brief in November of 2021. The brief focused on teaching, testing, and challenging players, slowly introducing mechanics which they are led to master.
The prototype contains three small levels: The first uses textmeshes to prompt the player to input Space to shoot, and then arrows to let players know they can move along the net by pressing an arrow button. The goal is marked by an object that stands out in terms of color, indicating that players must interact with it.
The second level tests whether players have understood the main mechanic by introducing a moving obstacle and a slightly more intricate level shape.
The third and last level challenges players by giving them multiple moving projectiles which they can interact with in order to reach the level’s goal.
London Bus stop model
This project was made in response to a brief for the course Prototype Development II at the University of the Art’s BA Games Design course using Maya and Unity. Two versions of this bus stop were created: The first depicts a bay norma stop in front of a building in Moorgate. Textures were created to look as close to the original p ictures as possible. The second version represents the same bus stop after a natural catastrophe. The setting is now a deserted, scorched landscape, where the sun has bleached signs and the force of the wind has demolished the rusted structure. The destru ction was made to look consequential: in that wind created dunes, which exerted pressure on the glass surfaces and metal frames, causing them to shatter and bend. This, in turn, destabilized the roof, which tilted and thus broke the right side of the bus s top, etc... The process behind modeling, sketching, UV mapping and texture creation for both bus stops is detailed in this presentation
Lights Off
Lights Off was made in 2021 response to a brief asking for an endless runner game with a clear losing condition, but no winning condition. I decided to make a game with a micro narrative, in which players control a ghost hotel innkeeper who tries to save his hotel from bankruptcy by switching light bulbs off to save money. If he is successful, the hotel expands, making the task of staying below budget more challenging. Players gain helpful items such as LED bulbs and Timer bulbs which they can strategically place to make their pathways easier. If the monthly budget is exceeded, the game ends. The project was made using the Agile method, so in weekly sprints, by myself. I used an Asana board to keep track of my weekly progress, plan ahead, and work efficiently
Shush
Shush is a game developed by a team of four in late 2020 to early 2021. I was responsible for organization and team coordination, level design, UI design, and for the coding of mechanics that were not related to the player's mechanics.
The game centralizes around the librarian profession in accordance with the brief it was made in response to and is a humorous take on old-fashioned arcade shooters. The player controls a neurotic librarian who shushes students by throwing books at them to keep the noise levels in the library to a minimum.
I began designing the library by mapping out the tiling in photoshop, later using a tile map in Unity to place the assets correctly and proportionally. I created a dynamic and varied space that would make navigation interesting throughout the whole game and let players choose optimal paths.
I am your Teddy
I am your teddy is a platformer with a narrative background. Teddy has been lost by a child in the forest and is trying to find his way back by following the trail of ribbons (at the end of each level). The game was made in collaboration with two animators and two game design students for a BA Games Design 2nd Year course. I was responsible for level design, UI design and implementation, animation programming and constructing a narrative frame. Coding tasks, as well as designing state machines and mechanics were done in collaboration with the second game designer on the team.