Projects

Key Project

Ode aan Ede

VR Narrative Walking Simulator

Why I Made This

  • As a Junior Developer working for my employer, I was tasked with developing a virtual reality experience for my clients newest museum exhibit focused on Dutch folk singer Ede Staal.
  • Further develop and improve my practical hard skills in Unreal Engine 5 for game development, technical and systems game design, and technical art towards a professional level for a Junior Technical Game Designer.

    • What I Wanted to Accomplish

  • Create an experience that showcases to players through both gameplay and environmental storytelling how Ede Staal’s music communicates stories on the topics of Dutch life, language, and landscape.
  • Create a virtual reality experience that is accessible and appeals to people who have little to no gaming or virtual reality experience such as the primary target audience of my clients business. Have this experience be the focal point of a new exhibit for my client and drive ticket sale revenue for their business.

    • What I Learned

  • How to lead international multidisciplinary teams to develop entertainment games in Unreal Engine as the primary designer on a project and manage daily workloads and tasks for interns. How to work with clients and communicate complex technical and design concepts throughout a project's life-cycle.
  • The process of designing, developing, and shipping a commercial entertainment game project in Unreal Engine for a client. Virtual reality game development best practices and techniques in Unreal Engine for both the Oculus Quest 2 and Pico 4 Enterprise systems.
    • Key Project

    Polder

    VR Godlike Strategic City-Builder

    Why I Made This

  • Create a prototype to launch my clients first commercial game under a new BV branch, use this product to leverage the company's expanded portfolio to generate commercial profit.
  • Further develop and improve my practical hard skills in Unreal Engine 5 for game development, technical and systems game design, and technical art towards a professional level for a Junior Game Designer.

    • What I Wanted to Accomplish

  • Have players experience a fun and engaging entertainment game that meets industry standards and best practices for casual games and virtual reality titles.
  • Players learn about the development of churches in the North of The Netherlands and Dutch history overall, and are more engaged with their current development. Players learn about modern uses that religiously unaffiliated (secular) churches fulfill in order to benefit society, and develop an improved view of these churches in the North of The Netherlands.

    • What I Learned

  • Best practices for building a virtual reality game in Unreal Engine 5. How to work with instanced static meshes to generate performant hexagonal grids in Unreal Engine 5, and then apply 2D noise to drive procedural generation on the grid. How to apply academic research towards influencing a desired behavioural change in a project's target audience through interaction and narrative design.
  • How to develop game mode logic and gameplay systems for the 3C’s (character, controls, camera) with more robust and efficient Blueprint communication methods that have their data abstracted and generalised for scalability and performance. How to work with Enhanced Input Actions, Niagara systems, and procedural generation in Unreal Engine 5.
    • Key Project

    CUBOID

    3rd Person Puzzle Platformer

    Why I Made This

  • Develop my level design skills using only basic geometric shapes (Primarily cubes and spheres) to establish interesting and engaging level design patterns, promoting the minimalist and brutalist themes present in the visual design of the game through highly expressive forms.
  • Practice creating self-projects through the lens of a portfolio piece, further establishing my game design and development process while maintaining strong design documentation for future reflections and a post-mortem.

    • What I Wanted to Accomplish

  • Have players experience feelings of excitement and immersion during regular gameplay through platforming in a minimalist and vibrant environment. Experience level design patterns that promote feelings of tension and conflict while avoiding hazards.
  • Establish a desire for completionism of the game as a result of the meta game progression by achieving the best score and time of each level. Achieved by practicing each level through multiple runs, and prioritising either completion time or high score based on level layout. Easy to learn but hard to master.

    • What I Learned

  • Spend more time prototyping my core game mechanic to make it truly unique and act as an instant attention grabber to new audiences. Do more market research into comparable games in the same genre to ensure I’m not repeating established designs without a unique twist.
  • Playtest earlier and much more often with my core target audience. This will allow me to solve design challenges earlier in my process, and pivot towards a solution while remaining in the project's scope.
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