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Copernicus is the codename for an unparalleled MMOG entertainment experience set in a truly evolving fantasy world that is both warmly familiar and intriguingly unique. Creative giants R. A. Salvatore and Todd McFarlane, together with the design teams at Big Huge Games and 38 Studios, are crafting a story of epic conflict and heroic individual journeys in which the players’ actions will impact the fate of the world. This storyline rests upon a solid design core that incorporates the best play and social experiences available to players at launch. Driven by the creative talents of Salvatore and McFarlane and enriched through an array of products that will allow broad and deep exploration of the vast universe of Copernicus, 38 Studios is combining the ages-old art of the story with 21st century interactive entertainment. For more information on the world, visit Amalur.com.

I worked as a Content Designer at 38 Studios on Project Copernicus crafting quests and the player experience through the world of Amalur.

Screenshots:

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In Monster High Ghoul Spirit, being the new ghoul at school is cool. Become a ghoul and perform creeptastic tasks, build a killer reputation and vie for the prestigious title of Scream Queen. Experience a vibrant, social, open world where you can explore the Monster High campus and mingle with the guys and ghouls of the student body. Create a monstrous look with scary-cute outfits, hairstyles and skin colors, complete with your very own freaky flaw and knock ‘em dead with your sinister style. Complete scaretastic assignments such as a hair trim for Clawdeen or leading the spirit cheer. Strive to be an ogre achiever by going to class and earning ghastly grades. Put your freaky-fabulous reputation to the test as you compete for the title of Scream Queen at the Terror Under the Sea Dance. Snap a photo of yourself with your DSi camera to ghoulify your own image (DSi camera required, not included). Enjoy unique gameplay each time, as the choices are yours — just like in real high school.

I worked as the Producer of both SKUs of this product and a Designer on the DS SKU. As a producer, I created the schedules, managed the teams, and planned and tracked the project from sprint to sprint. As a designer, I scripted multi-branching dialogue trees in lua, scripted player interactions, and placed triggers, objects, and characters throughout the world using proprietary tools.

Screenshots:

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The game of hilarious comparisons goes digital. A virtual version of the classic card game. Playable online with up to 6 players in classic mode or in all new game modes, Backed Apples and Crab Apples. Players choose from 1 of 26 Apple Avatars to represent themselves online. With quirky environments like Space Apples, Wild West Apples and Carnival Apples that can be used to customize the virtual playspace. Also, Golden Apple Cards can be collected that offer surprising twists to gameplay.

Worked as the Producer and Designer of both SKUs of this product from Pre-Production to Vertical Slice. As a Producer, I created the schedules, managed the team, and tracked the project from sprint to sprint. As a Designer, I modified the original GDD based on client feedback, including completely redesigning two local multiplayer modes and the single player mode. Worked with the creative team to help set the creative direction and style of the project.

Screenshots:

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A 3D re-imagining and sequel to the classic Atari game, Haunted House. The game featured two playable characters, the grandchildren of the original’s protagonist, and spanned four unique environments each filled with four levels of horrifying gameplay and a gruesome final boss battle. With a dependence upon light sources and a focus on exploration, the game paid homage to the gameplay of the original while iterating upon combat and bringing the graphics into the present with a fully realized 3D world.

Videos:

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Screenshots:

The classic assassin game is brought to the iOS in this Augmented Reality Shooter. Jump right into the action by using the camera as your weapon of choice for instant fun shots in the ‘Quickshot’ mode. And once you are ready for some real competition, get into the multiplayer mode to invite and play against your friends! Pump up your arsenal by purchasing the latest weapons, specialized ammo and armor. With the camera as your crosshairs, anything in the world can be your target. But beware, around every corner could be another Appsassin!

I worked as the Producer and Designer of this augmented reality mobile game. As a producer, I managed and scheduled a small internal team and a larger outsourced team. As a designer, I created the GDD and all other design documentation using the creative direction set forth in the proposal. Critiqued and iterated upon art and design direction to make the game an engaging and unique experience.

Screenshots:

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Quintessence is a puzzle/platformer with an elemental twist. The player takes control of two unique, elemental  avatars and must use each’s abilities to overcome a variety of elemental puzzles and enemies. Each form has a custom elemental traversal that allows that form to overcome platforming twists in the environment. In addition, each has either a fire or water based attack that deals more damage to enemeies that are weak to that element. The goal of the game is to destroy two evil demons (one of fire and one of water) and restore elemental balance to the world of Quintessence.

I worked as the producer of this 3D Puzzle/Platformer with another Masters student, six Game Art majors, and seven Game Development majors for our final project at Full Sail University. I managed the project and crafted the schedules. I also created the website and project wiki.

Links:

Download Quintessence

Quintessence Game Website

 Project Wiki

Screenshots:

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The premise of the game is that in the not too distant future yearly garbage truck battle competitions are held to determine which garbage company will be allowed to collect the garbage in an area for the rest of the year.

This game was created by myself and three other students at the Georgia Institute of Technology for the final project of our Video Game Design class. The game runs on PC or Xbox 360, but was designed for the Xbox 360 and requires 4 Xbox 360 controllers.  It was made using XNA, Microsoft’s homebrew development kit. I was the game designer for the game. I designed the control scheme and determined the basics of the gameplay, which we as a group developed further as we playtested. I was in charge of creating and coding the HUD, menus, story portions, and camera system.   I also helped to collect feedback from playtests and add aditional code where needed.

Screenshots:

This prototype game was created for my Principles of Interaction and Design class in Flash.  The game was designed to be played by multiple players on a Tangible multi-touch wall interface.  The players would be able to build structures from falling pieces, using two fingers, one as a pivot point and one to cause rotation, in order to rotate the pieces (mimicked in the prototype with the left  mouse button and the mouse-wheel).  The players would be able to attack each other to the left and right by flicking bombs and other weapons.  If the player missed a bomb it would destroy part of their own structure.  In the prototype we got to the point of building structures and flicking bombs, demonstrating how the game would play from one person’s perspective were we to actually build a wall interface.  I also wrote a random piece generator that generates pieces to fall in addition to designed pieces.

Presentation:

Download (PDF, 95KB)

This prototype was made for my Interactive Narrative class to explore conversation systems in interactive media.  From the early PC adventure games to modern RPGs, I have always found dialog systems to be an interesting, yet mostly missing component in video games, especially considering the importance of dialog in films and books.  If video games truly want to compete with other media on an emotional level, dialog must definitely be considered and improved.  With this project I decided to rethink navigation and interface in dialog systems.  This prototype attempts to remove choosing actual lines of dialog in exchange for choosing positive and negative emotions and the ability to change topics using the “memory bubbles” on the table.  Also, I allowed the NPC the ability to change topics, which I feel really adds to the believability of the character in this work of interactive fiction.

Links:

Explore The Dialogue Tree

Detailed Write-Up:

Download (PDF, 35KB)

Screenshots:

For this prototype I expanded upon my previous work of interactive fiction “The Conversation”.  In this piece, I decided to play with multiple perspectives by allowing the user to select which perspective they want to view/interact with the conversation from at any time.  I also changed the previous interface to allow for dialog choices to lie in the environment (the items on the table change topics and the thought bubbles allow for emotional responses) thus removing the HUD from the previous experience.  I also, completely re-wrote the underlying xml dialog parsing system from “The Conversation” to allow for more flexible dialog navigation.  The only negative to this project was that rethinking the HUD and underlying code took more time than I expected which forced the dialog in this work to end up much shorter than “The Conversation” (in which I wrote over 400 lines of dialog).

Links:

Explore The Dialogue Tree

Detailed Write-Up:

Download (PDF, 37KB)

Screenshots: