PROJECTS
REVENGE OF THE KILLER OCTOPUS
A third person shooter about an incredibly murderous cephalopod
ROLE: DESIGNER/PRODUCER
Development responsibilities
Designed and tested levels and gameplay
Ensured stable communication between design and engineering.
Used Perforce to enable reliable version control.
Worked and produced for a team of 24 people.
Created a unique and immersive laboratory environment with retro flair.
Took point on quick responses to communications from multiple teams.
Responded to feedback and adjusted features.
DEV BLOG
The biggest thing I learned on Revenge is that the most intuitive thing isn't always the best. A big challenge was that we were working with an octopus- that means 8 guns, right? And while we did a good job of coming up with a way to make 8 guns work without being painful, it ended up feeling less like 8 guns and more like one giant cannon spewing projectiles- not a bad mechanic, but I think there were ways to do it better.
Another big challenge on the project was working around the nasty combination of technical limitations and sometimes dysfunctional teammates. The game spent multiple months waiting for the octopus to be rigged and animated, yet no progress was made because the only person on the team with the capability wasn't doing it. In the end, the creative solution was to make the octopus ragdoll, which I think honestly improved the game- the lesson was to not be dismissive of seemingly 'inferior' solutions as sometimes, a ragdoll octopus is infinitely more funny than a properly animated one.
Another major struggle I had was technical debt. When we initiated the project, we began with just Blueprints. As the liaison between design and engineering, that was fine for a while. But eventually we wanted to add a speedrun leaderboard on a server, but due to the hassle that changing to a code based project would cause, the technical debt prevented us from doing so.
