Technical Game Designer

Here are all the project I worked on as a Technical Game Designer. I can work on any kind of game from Children Mobile games to VR God Games on HTC Vive. Technically speaking, I prefer to work on Unity as it is the first engine I worked on and practiced the most but I also have notions on Unreal Engine 4.

I code in C# and have notions in Unreal Blueprints.

As a Technical Game Designer, I like to prototype fast. I like to design a mechanic and try it soon after in the engine. First to see if it is easy to develop and then, to have an idea of how much time it will take to the programmers to properly code it. Besides it can give the team quite soon an idea of how it fits in the game and if it’s worth to be kept, need to be reworked or totally abandoned.
It’s also a good way to properly show to everybody in the team how the game designer imagined the mechanic and then clarify and avoid confusion. It then facilitates the dialog between all the people involved.
Once everything is clear for everybody and the mechanic is being integrated by programmers, my job is then to add the juiciness to the experience. Temporary and place holders effects sure but effects anyway. It helps me to see where feedbacks and signs are needed and what kind of feedbacks and signs it should be.

The Light on the Rock

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(From 01/09/2018 to 24/04/2019)

Trailer

Developed on UE4 in Blueprints.

The Light on the Rock is a Narrative Lovecraftian horror game where the player embodies a lighthouse keeper stranded in the middle of a sea full of monsters and who has to make dire decisions to survive and remain sane, each one of his decisions having an impact on the story sooner or later.
You could see it as Firewatch taking place in a Lovecraft novel.
The game is for PC, PS4, XBox One, Switch and possibly VR.
I worked on this project for 7 months mostly on my own, being all at the same time Designer, Programmer, Writer, 3D modeler, Animator and creative director.  After these 7 months, I have reached a proof of concept prototype of 3 chapters and 20 minutes of gameplay.
My biggest challenge was to be able to put up the whole game following my main intentions of creating an ambient horror rather than using gore or jump scares and make it so that each choice faced by the player is meaningful.

For the ambient horror I created the whole level design in such way that everything would look hostile and monstrous with giant threatening rocks and the lighthouse designed to look like an evil giant. Besides, all along the game, the events occurring get scarier every time and isolate the character, making him more vulnerable. As the days go by, the threat gets bigger and closer.

To make the choices more meaningful, I built the whole tree of choices and the whole storyline so that all of the player’s decisions, as little as they are, have an impact on the short and long term. Usually if a decision brings a solution for an immediate problem, it creates bigger trouble later on. This way, the player is forced to ponder and consider his options even when the situation is an emergency.
On the technical side, my main concern was to make systems in such a way that they were all at the same time easy to use (make the systems as automated as possible but giving me enough levers to tweak them if needed) and optimized so that they are not too heavy on resources. In that matter, I have spent the most time codding, tweaking and iterating on the systems of events (basically the manager taking care of the proceedings of the different chapters) and the dialogue manager (the blueprint ensuring that all the dialogues are played at the right time, with the right subtitle and, in a perfect world, the right sound).
I also had to learn how to use Blender to create 3D models, animations and export it all in UE4. Obviously, it was all for place holders that would give the player an idea of what is what and how it works. I don’t pretend that anything I created was final.
I had to conduct a recruitment process to select the perfect sound designer to work with me on the game.
Finally, I had to create the trailer of the game (available here) and collaborate with the sound designer to edit the video in the best way possible.
Artwork by Pauline Sion.

Coaster Combat

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(From 01/07/2017 to 31/10/2017)

Developed on UE4

Coaster Combat is the mix between a VR Roller Coaster and a shooting game. The player goes across a randomly generated level following a roller coaster track and has to shoot as many collectibles as possible in order to make the best score. The game is composed of different themes, each of them offering a new experience to the player due to the different environment. The game is playable on Samsung Gear VR with or without the Gear Controller.

I worked on this project during my 6 month internship in Force Field VR. I mostly worked on the level design of the game by placing the collectibles, the events and tweaking the behavior of the weapons but I also took part in the prototyping of features and the sound integration.

Placing the collectibles was a challenge as every track is randomly generated and the collectibles active on it are randomly selected. The goal was then to make them all equally interesting in their placement and find the right balance between easy and hard collectibles. To ensure the quality of each level, I conducted playtests on groups of different players. We decided to classify players according to their level of experience with the game (from new players to experts of the game). This way it was easy for us to see the impact of the tweaks on different types of players. I then processed and exposed the feedback to the team to decide what to do.

I also worked on the prototyping of different features using Blueprints to test them and see if they were interesting enough to be integrated in the game.

Finally, I  worked on the creation of a coherent sound atmosphere for the game by placing reverb zones and creating systems to play ambient loops. The challenge here was to create a sound atmosphere as rich as possible but keeping it as light as possible regarding to the ressource consumption.

For more information about Coaster Combat  :

BABYLON

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(From 10/01/2017- 24/06/2017)

Developed on Unity 5.

Babylon is a VR God Game using HTC Vive and my final year project. In this game, the player embodies a God hired by others divinities to build towers to their glory. To do so, the player has to manage and protect a team of minions. He has to make them get him the different ressources he needs and protect them from all kinds of unfortunate events.

Babylon’s production is to this day (04/06/2017) still going on. The project is created by a team of 7 students. On this project, my mission is to co-design the mechanics with another Game Designer and to make a small prototype of them to test them and see if they are worth keeping. It’s my first development on a VR platform.

I am also in charge of all the narrative aspect of the game.

Finally I am responsible for all the level design. Level design in VR brings all kind of new interrogations such as the importance of the verticality, the perception of depth in level design and also the space occupied by the player while he plays.

Please, click the link to see a trailer of our game : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rsmN5Pt8wk

Please click the link to play the game :https://fyrost.itch.io/babylon

MUR

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(06/15/2016 -09/23/2016)

Developed on Unity 5.

Mur is a mobile story driven game for children developed by Step In Books and based on the eponymous book by Kaisa Järnefelt and Anne Vasko. The particularity of this game, like all the Step In Books’ games, is that it places the player in the middle of its world wich can be seen all around the player through the screen of his cellphone.

The player embodies Mur, a young bear different from the others. Indeed, he doesn’t like to sleep during winter or prepare for hibernation and prefers playing in the autumn leaves. He spends then the winter awake, playing in the cave to all kinds of games. Finally he realises that he is not just a normal bear, he is a winter bear. He embraces that revelation and finally elevate to the star. The game is highly poetic and deals with self acceptance.

Mur gathers a bunch of mini-games all using different small interactions of the device. The whole game is also a lot about music and you can feel it in the mini-games which deal with rhythm and natural/orchestral music.

In this production, my mission was to co-design all the mini-games of the game and create prototypes. I designed more than 10 mini-games and made 6 prototypes, iterating on them to make them as good as possible.

My biggest challenge on that game was to create extra simple concept mini-games using extra-simple interactions and almost no system to make them easily understandable for young children. It needed me to create short Challenge/Reward loops. Also as the game is « VR for children »it raised questions about motion sickness and other problems related to VR.

For further information on Mur : http://stepinbooks.com/

Seven Minutes In The Warsaw Ghetto

7min_storplakat_preview(06/15/2016 -09/23/2016)

Developed on Unity 5.

Like Mur, Seven minutes in the Warsaw ghetto (SMWG) is a mobile interactive movie developed by Step In Books. I worked on it during my internship there. SMWG is developed in collaboration with the director of the original movie : Johan Oettinger.

The movie tells the story of a young boy living with his familly in the Warsaw Ghetto during WWII. The concept of the game is to purpose to the player to truly go « to the other side of the screen », inside the movie’s scenes. To do so, the game allows the player to watch the movie and, from time to time, offers him interactive scenes. In those scenes, the player can look freely around him to discover the setting of the film and he can interact with different objects to make the story continue.

I arrived on this project at its very end. My mission was mostly to make polish before the game was released. I had to improve UI of the game, create a gallery displaying all the « Behind the Scene » photos, improve performances of the game to make it run smoother, create Level Design according to the VR and experiences constraints and modify the design of the scenes to make them more interactives.

For further information on Seven Minutes in the Warsaw Ghetto : http://stepinbooks.com/

HOUKAPITE

Developed on Unity 5.

Houkapite is a game I developed with five other people during the Global Game Jam 2016. On this edition, the theme was Ritual.

Houkapite is a 4 players couch game in which each player embodies an animal prepared to be sacrificed by a powerful shaman. The goal for each player is to protect his animal during as many rounds as possible. At the beginning of every round, the shaman says an incantation composed by a certain number of words, each word corresponding to a certain zone of the terrain that explodes at the end of the incantation. The player has to remember what word has been said and in what order because that’s the order according to which the explosions occur.

On this project I was the one responsible of the programming part and I took part in the design.

BARABABOR

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Developed on Unity 5.

Barababor is a Tamagotchi-like mobile game developed by Zeilt Production I worked on during my internship there. The game is based on one of the company’s licences : Barababor, an animated humorous series about a crew of unskilled conquistadores.

The mobile game is developped at the same time as a computer game. The two projects are linked in their game design as playing to one of them affects your results in the other.

In the mobile game, the player has to take care of his captain and customize his boat. The captain has 4 needs : hunger, thirst, boredom and health. The player has to keep an eye on these needs to always keep his captain in good shape. Whenever the captain feels either hungry, thirsty, sick or bored, the player has to play a mini-game to keep him satisfied. Having an healthy captain is important because it grants bonuses on the computer game.

Customize the ship is also an important part as having the perfect ship not only helps you in the mobile game but also in the computer one. For that, the player buys pieces of equipment such as cannons, mast or keel using soft currency earned in the computer game.

To this day, the game is not released yet and still in development.

As Zeilt Production is originally an animation studio, my internship’s purpose was mostly to prepare a first draft of the project that would be developed completely by another team after my departure.

I was alone on the mobile game project while another intern was developing the computer game.

I designed the game, its UI and prototyped it all for android platform. I developed 6 mini-games based on the licence’s universe.

For further information on Barababor : http://www.zeiltproductions.com/

PROCHAIN ARRÊT

prochain-arret(07/01/2015-09/30/2015)

Developed on Unity 5.

As for Barababor, Prochain Arrêt is a game based on a licence detained by Zeilt Production I worked on during my internship.

On contrary to Barababor, the Prochain Arrêt licence is not only entertaining, it also has an educative goal. The spectator follows the adventures of two aliens comming to earth, every time near a new monument. A third character always tries to explain the story of the monument to his colleagues.

Prochain Arrêt is a serie of short episodes all presenting a French, Luxembourger or Belgian monument.

The principle of this game, I co-developed with another intern, is to create a way for the spectator to learn more about the monument dealt with during an episode than what was said in the show. To do so, the game purposes mini-games related to different things that can be found in the monument. It also offers the possibility to make an interactive guided tour of the monument with the game using augmented reality to recognize where you are in the monument, what you are looking at and give you the related mini-game and explanations.

On this project I developed half of the mini-games and the whole UI and menu part.

For further information on Prochain Arrêt : http://www.zeiltproductions.com/