Student Work
Work from my time at Vancouver Film School.
Below is a broad range of the work I did at Vancouver Film School. You can view embedded examples of my Blueprint Scripting, as well as see my demo reel from school. Some of the types of things these projects involved me doing were:
Planning and execution of 2D and 3D level layouts from paper plans, to whitebox, to art pass.
Gameplay tuning, mission scripting, cinematics, and VFX.
Design documentation - from beat charts to mission pitches, with document maintenance along the way.
Execute on a broad range of level and mission designs, from puzzles, to shooter encounters, to co-op design, racetracks, and more.
Headventures in the Underworld was my final project at VFS, and created over the course of 5 months. On Headventures, I was a Level Designer and VFX Artist, acting the primary owner of our Game Design Document (which can be read HERE) and a contributor to our Art Bible (found HERE). Below you can find some examples of my work.
When designing levels for Headventures, I tried to constantly keep in mind both common player goals, and individual player goals. As a co-op game, it was very important for us that each player felt that they were contributing to the overall objective in their own unique way. By using a wide range of enemies (4 different types), and a combination of asymmetric and symmetric puzzle design, we encourage players to work together, even when they must accomplish individual tasks. This could mean, for instance, that one player must block a hazard using their head, and stand on a pressure plate in order to allow the other player to open an area for them.
DOWNLOAD HEADVENTURES (Requires 2 Xbox Controllers and a friend to play!)
Based off the role-specific puzzles of the classic Lost Vikings, Lost Champions is a 3rd person puzzle game made using Unreal Engine 4, where players must use the unique abilities of each champions together to solve puzzles and escape the dungeon. While working on Lost Champions, I designed my level to teach players the abilities of their champions separately and with minimal punishment for failure before requiring that they use all abilities together. Additionally, I tried to create different situations, both on and off the critical path, that require different combinations of hero abilities in order to keep surprising and delighting players.
Designed as a teaching tool for cover-based shooters, Combat Sim involves 3 different beat types: Stealth, Defense, and Assault, and is made in Unreal Engine 4. For Combat Sim, I focused on interesting architecture to create my cover layouts. Because each beat type is so different, it was a challenge to design consistent spaces that still served their respective gameplay purpose. Ultimately, my decision to craft my level around interesting architecture resulted in spaces that felt distinct, and served to move gameplay forward and highlight each different beat type effectively.
For both tracks I created for this project, I focused on landmarking in order to give players a sense of progression. For my A-to-B track, this took the form of players making their way through a large canyon two thirds of the way through the track. In my circuit track, the landmarking was slightly different because players would pass by each landmark twice. This meant that I focused on placing landmarks that could easily indicate to players their position in the current lap, like large cacti, and a mesa overhang.
Kage (Kah-Geh) is a fast-paced 2D platformer game with simple combat mechanics that places a strong emphasis on fast, fluid movement. In Kage, players must use their slashes, dashes, and jumps to avoid gruesome death and annihilate any enemies in the way of their revenge. On Kage I was primarily a Level Designer, but also worked on Gameplay Design as well as VFX.