Projects

Project Broadside

Project Broadside was the very first video game I made. This was a top down game where you commanded a warship that needed to complete a mission (either moving a package from one side of the map to the other, defeating enemies, or traveling to a location on the map). You would click on the map to tell the ship to go there. As they reached their location, time would slow down, so players could do other tactical moves (mainly shooting and choosing the next location). It was a great first project, made even better by the other 2 people on the team.

Princess of Anarchy

You can play Princess of Anarchy on the DigiPen Game Gallery.

Princess of Anarchy is a 2D puzzle-based game made in a custom engine where you play as a princess tasked with saving her knights from a dungeon. The entire game is a tutorial leading up to one big boss fight with a large, red dragon. I designed most of the levels, especially the order and execution of the tutorial levels, and made most of the artwork (except for the profile images and the UI icons).

This game does not hold great memories for me... there were a lot of team issues and complications in communication between teachers and fellow teammates. That being said, the game is fun to play and I am proud of the work that went into it (as a team, we did make a good product).

Aapo & Soona

You can play Aapo & Soona on the DigiPen Game Gallery.

Aapo & Soona was created primarily to showcase the art team's abilities, but it was a great opportunity for me to flex my UI/UX skills via the tutorial, the menu and HUD UI, and by being the head playtest coordinator for the team. Since it was a thesis project for a majority of the 14 team members, it was a big deal to be able to focus on polish and making the game feel just right.

The game itself is a 2-player couch co-op 3D platformer game where 2 players take control of a Mayan deity (Aapo or Soona) and work together to overcome an obstacle course and reach the end. This was a project made in Unreal, and it was my first project working with Blueprints and the spaghetti that forms when I try to hook up my UI code to an already messy and complex string of code. Finally, it was my first time designing a UI around a controller (as opposed to keyboard and mouse), which definitely presented its own unique set of problems. Add to that the fact that the game was split screen for an engine that barely has support for a single screen UI, and I was clearly a little in over my head for this project. With that said, this was by far my greatest work at DigiPen. Everything managed to pull through and my UI ended up working really well for the game.

Monster Trucks

Monster Trucks was a GAT project, which actually meant that I had to make this game solo. Its a rapid prototype, which was something DigiPen really focused heavily on for designers. I made this whole thing in about a month.

This is a 3D Monster Truck Rally game made in Unity. You play as a Monster Truck Driver and earn points by driving over the obstacle course in stylish ways. Through this game, I got to practice my skills in level design. Using colors and camera angles, I made a quick tutorial of simple ways to navigate through a monster truck arena. I then slowly introduced new "toys" to change the arena space as the player became more comfortable and skilled with the game. It was a fun experiment and I enjoyed playing around with customization menus for UI (so you could deck out your monster truck, of course).

Voodoo!

Another GAT class I had around this time was a table top role playing game (ttrpg) class. In this class, we were taught how to make stat blocks, modules, and eventually our own ttrpg system. The system I designed was one where you play as a Voodoo Practitioner in the Louisiana Bayou in the 70s. Players work as a team to perform a voodoo ritual before time runs out.

I gained experience working with a completely different kind of design process (specifically in regards to playtesting). I also got to practice my narrative design skills by creating fake political systems headed by NPCs based on real historical figures from that time period and location. I developed my skills in systems design by mixing a D20 system and a mixed-die system to cast magic spells.

All together, this was a fun experience and I ended up utilizing a lot of these skills for my personal projects. As much as rapid prototyping can be fun, it never really becomes a finished product without a lot of help from other people (or a lot of free time). By comparison, writing a module or coming up with a system for a ttrpg can be done on my own and still showcases a lot of the design skills I've honed.

CyberCars

This game doubled as my Senior Thesis at DigiPen. I wanted to make an educational game that taught math skills via racing themed minigames. I wanted to work on a project that could actually be used in a classroom, so I worked together with a network programmer and a fellow designer to create a teacher dashboard that could connect display student abilities in a way that helped teachers adjust to student needs.

Ultimately, this project is what got me hired for my first professional job at Kooapps.

Escape from Alaska

Escape from Alaska was another GAT project, but I was given 2 semesters to work on it: 1 for the rapid prototype and 1 for polish (a total of ~6 months of work). This is a text-adventure game (like Oregon Trail) made in Unity. In this game, you play as a "Musher" (think mailman) who leads a team of huskies along the coast of Alaska (around the Iditarod Trail).

This game was a great chance for me to work on polish as a UI/UX designer. I learned some tricks for making a game look better just by adding shadows and I learned how to polish up a prototype simply by stylizing some artwork from the creative commons. In short, it taught me that a little bit of extra work can really go a long way.

This was also my first experience really working with a storytelling game. At the time, my narrative skills were weak and this game really had me struggling not only with implementation, but with making a cool story that was fun to play. I had to relearn how to properly scope, since stories can get really big really fast and you need to know how to cut it back down to a managable size.

Kooapps LLC

My official title while working at Kooapps was Associate Project Manager. This was basically just so I could be a touchstone for the project they had me on. The project itself required an SBIR grant (and we won the grant, so its now public information). In short, this project was an educational endeavor to give students who were learning English as a 2nd language (known now as English Language Learners or ELLs) a chance to practice their English skills in a fun and engaging way.

I was in charge of the UI designs for both the mobile app that the students would use and the web dashboard that the teachers would use. Kooapps has offices in various parts of the world, so I would often need to work later in the day so I could have meetings with the coding team who were working in the Phillipines. My boss lived in San Francisco, the bug team was in China, and my playtests happened in Texas. All in all, it was an interesting experience working on what was basically a remote team.

The most fun part, for me, about this project I was hired for was that I got to work with teachers to come up with a curriculum and a measurement system to best track how well the students were improving because of our app. Working with the playtesting group and seeing real life results was so fascinating and felt so rewarding. My dream job is to work on educational games, and this was a very close realization of that dream.

ChangeMakers

You can read more about ChangeMakers here.

ChangeMakers was a project I had technically started in 2019, while waiting to hear back from Kooapps on whether or not they wanted to hire me. I was trying to make an educational ttrpg that could be used in classrooms to teach history and civics. While it is currently on hiatus (I just can't get playtesters while Covid is happening), I do hope to pick it up again sometime soon. It has a lot of really interesting pieces to it and I just need to figure out a way to pull them all together.

Trials of Boozer

You can buy a copy of this module on DriveThru RPG.

Trials of Boozer is a story about a cat who is being haunted by ghosts. It comes complete with 4 pre-generated characters, maps, and handouts all created by me. While the layout is a template provided by Chaosium to start with, the flow of information, the accessibility features, and the story itself were all done with my own skills.

Boozer was a project I made through the Storytelling Collective's Create Your First Adventure Summer Workshop. (You can find more about that here.) I knew most of the information already, thanks to my degree in Game Design, but it did provide me with new insights on marketing and project management (which was what I was really hoping for anyways). The goal was to make a professional level product (from start to finish) by the end of summer (3 months).

Temple of Dyosi

You can download a copy of Dyosi on itch.io.

You can read more about my plans for Dyosi over here.

The Temple of Dyosi is a free tutorial for combat in the Quest RPG system. In it, you fight golems, solve a puzzle, and retrieve the relic for safekeeping from those who wish to destroy it. It is meant to be a simple 1 hour session (as opposed to the typical 3 - 8 hour session) to teach basic game mechanics and get players hyped for the real thing. I kept the narrative simple, so Guides (those running the game) can reflavor the scene to match whatever story they want to tell. If you're curious about the Quest RPG system, it is available here.

Made with Love

You can buy a copy of Made with Love on itch.io.

This is another module for the Quest RPG system that I recently released. I wanted to make something light-hearted that could showcase my narrative skills and growth over the past year. I also wanted to use some newfound marketing skills with it to see what the process was like and get a better feel for how it all works.

I really liked the world building for this project - as much as it is super corny and full of Valentine's Day jokes - and am looking forward to making more stories set in the same world. I wanted to make sure that Guides had a chance to use this one-shot to create a whole campaign for their players if they wanted to, so applying small world building nuggets in the flavor text and location descriptions helps encourage that.