Malediction

Links: ( Steam )

 

At FIEA, students participate in a huge two semester  long game project called Capstone, and Malediction is the  game I have had the pleasure of working on. 

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We usually end up filling in for multiple roles – as a level designer, that put in the position of both a game designer and mechanics implementer for our game. Specifically, I found myself prototyping the levels and gameplay moments I had laid out so that when the engineers got to it, they had a concise vision of what the game was expected to do. I had unique opportunity to both curate an experience for a player, and constantly playtest that experience as I crafted it. Not to say I did it alone though, every level was made with the help of talented artists and engineers to back me up to nail down our visual targets and keep our gameplay consistent and bug free. The constant communication was instrumental in the workflow of everyone on the team - and absolutely needed for the scope of levels we decided to create.

From paper to Unreal Blueprinting, I was tasked with working on the core game loop of our capstone title in its entirety. Through this experience I feel I’ve grown stronger as a designer, as it wasn’t just good enough to make an idea on paper, I had to implement and make sure it felt right. Which drilled in the fact we all know about game design, that iteration is key. Writing documentation for every level, and maintaining that documentation as changes were made, was a huge burden as the project grew larger. The constant updates however kept communication flowing smoothly between art, design, and programming, making all that extra work worth it.