Design
If immersion is the treasure and the story is the lock, then context is the key.
Though I have skills in games production, I am most skilled at story-telling and its processes of writing, story building, character development, script-writing, planning, decision making, and context control.
Game Documentation
Concept Design, Story Building, Mechanic Design, Character Development, World Building and Documentation Development
The Judge was a university design project to help develop my design documentation skills and knowledge. For this, I create a design portfolio that holds design decisions for game features from mechanics to character design. Not only was my production knowledge widened, but I was able to show my mechanical design skills as well as my art.
Cinematic Creation
Though much of a game's narrative can be showcased subtly across its level design, dialogue choices and character design, cinematics are used widely across narrative heavy games to showcase the explicit parts of a narrative to a player as an experience, which some even being interactive.
I have experience creating cinematics for my personal projects to showcase narrative - using a mixture of the Unreal Engine level sequencer as well as some video editing to create story driven sequences for the player to enjoy and to enhance their game experience.
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I view more of my cinematic work, visit the project pages linked below
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Story Boarding
Frame 1
Establishing Shot
0-4 seconds
The camera tilts up towards the sky after focusing on the strands of breeze waving grass.
English countryside fields surrounded by trees in a quiet hilly area. The main area of the terrain is a yellowy golden, while as the hills get higher it becomes more green – with the trees being bushy as if it were summer. The area looks secluded and really peaceful apart from the breeze moving the foliage.
The sky isn't particularly bright, it looks like the afternoon, with the sun's setting casting an orange glow on the environment.
There's no sound, only ambient breeze.
Story Writing
The player will be put into the shoes of Luna, a rebellious alien of the Zergaitem species who finds herself on Earth after being sent away by her parents in the genocide of her people. As a naive, frustrated and quick tempered teenager, she believes that her parents abandoned her; not remembering the night she was sent away for her own safety. Shes arrogant, quick-witted and quite good at deception and thievery to get what she wants - which, as limited to the planet of Earth, is creating mechanical projects as her father taught her from the moment she could walk.
On her 18th birthday however, one of these projects ends up providing her with the information that a mysterious craft has been found, wrecked, just a few miles from her Australian home. Maybe birthday wishes do come true. After slipping past the guards, Luna finds herself in the middle of the chaos with a perfect opportunity to steal the craft for herself. And to her surprise, the crafts pilot, Rezek, finds himself in the run-down stable house at the bottom of her garden. Finally, she has a chance to leave and be free from her Earth prison... but can she persuade him to take her too?
I've been writing since I could - making stories, worlds and characters. This partners well with games design, as writing a stories structure and backstory is what leads to all the other sections of narrative design seen in this section.
To view more story building and writing, see the projects linked below
Character and Object Design
Due to writing novels and making story-based games, I've been able to develop my character and object design skills, alongside the showcasing of my artistic abilities. I usually produce notes with a design sketch, before creating an in-depth character or object portfolio, featuring research on design choices as well as a finalized drawing or model. See more mechanically inclined character design in my game portfolio linked below, while a weapon design is present on another page.
Level Design
For the purpose of other design elements, as well as prototypes and environment, I have made many level designs in the past. Not only do these provide guides, but it allows for objects to be organized based on design choices before they are even made. These designs are often utilized with another design piece, such as a flowchart.
To view more level design work use the button below
Narrative and Dialogue Flow
Twine Story Building and Narrative Flowcharting
I often create flowcharts to help plan out larger branching narratives. For this, IÂ use the Twine software, which IÂ have also used to make text-adventure games. Not only are these visually helpful when designing flow, but they also allow all information to be segmented, which helps with readability on larger projects. I also tend to use other formatted flowcharts alongside these for mechanical design, which is linked below.
Mechanical Flow
Puzzle Design
I use flowcharts to help design how levels and mechanics work together to form a flow - with a similar flow being created for the narrative, linked below. If both become streamlined, both narrative and mechanics sync. To make sure these can be understood by programmers later in development, keys are used with certain shapes representing different actions and features in the mechanics. Flowcharting is an integral part of OOD and helps programmers make the most optimized code for a game or software.
To view more puzzle design view them within the GDD linked below
