Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty
Open World, Action Adventure RPG
I owned the gameplay design and implementation of the combat encounters, AI behaviours, weapon progression and score system for a high-lethality 2D run-and-gun arcade experience for Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty. As Lead Game Designer, I led a team of 3 programmers and was responsible for taking the gamplay systems from design through implementation, balancing and delivery.
Role: Lead Game Designer · System · Combat · Encounter · Level Designer
Key Results:
- Adapated a classic high-lethality arcade formula for modern audiences: Designed experience centred around fast decision making, spatial mastery and weapon interaction, while maintaining the tension and immediacy of limited survivability.
- Established core gameplay foundation: Owned end-to-end design and implementation of enemy and NPC behaviours, weapons, enemy spawning, combat mechanics, scoring and encounter systems, intergrating them into a cohesive gameplay experience.
- Spatial mastery as core combat skill: Designed combat zones where survival and scoring depended on reading enemy poisitioning, controlling movement space and exploiting weapon-swapping through complementary weapon trajectories.
- Drove fast-paced combat through constant spatial pressure: Designed enemy placements and AI behaviours that continuously challanged player positioning and movement, forcing rapid threat assessment and adaptation throughout each encounter.
- Balanced high lethality against player frustration: Deliberately placement of fixed powerups, including 1-Ups and weapon upgrades. This created predictable opportunities for recovery and progression while preserving the tension and risk associated with limited survivability.
Key Contributions: - Designed, tuned and balanced combat encounters, level layouts, AI behaviours, weapon interactions and enemy placements, ensuring each system reinforced the intended high-lethality gameplay loop.
- Led a team of 3 programmers, communicating design vision, requirements, prioritising implementation tasks and conducting scheduled and ad-hoc reviews to resolve gameplay issues within 6 months production deadline.
- Managed the gamplay QA process, including bug indentification, reproduction, task allocation and reporting, ensuring issues were resolved in timely manner.
- Worked closely with programmers throughout implementation to rapidly identify design and technical contrainst, iterate on solutions and maintain gameplay quality through to delivery.
Technical Documentation:
I owned the gameplay design and implementation of the combat encounters, AI behaviours, weapon progression and score system for a high-lethality 2D run-and-gun arcade experience for Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty. As Lead Game Designer, I led a team of 3 programmers and was responsible for taking the gamplay systems from design through implementation, balancing and delivery.
Role: Lead Game Designer · System · Combat · Encounter · Level Designer
- Adapated a classic high-lethality arcade formula for modern audiences: Designed experience centred around fast decision making, spatial mastery and weapon interaction, while maintaining the tension and immediacy of limited survivability.
- Established core gameplay foundation: Owned end-to-end design and implementation of enemy and NPC behaviours, weapons, enemy spawning, combat mechanics, scoring and encounter systems, intergrating them into a cohesive gameplay experience.
- Spatial mastery as core combat skill: Designed combat zones where survival and scoring depended on reading enemy poisitioning, controlling movement space and exploiting weapon-swapping through complementary weapon trajectories.
- Drove fast-paced combat through constant spatial pressure: Designed enemy placements and AI behaviours that continuously challanged player positioning and movement, forcing rapid threat assessment and adaptation throughout each encounter.
- Balanced high lethality against player frustration: Deliberately placement of fixed powerups, including 1-Ups and weapon upgrades. This created predictable opportunities for recovery and progression while preserving the tension and risk associated with limited survivability.
Key Contributions:
- Designed, tuned and balanced combat encounters, level layouts, AI behaviours, weapon interactions and enemy placements, ensuring each system reinforced the intended high-lethality gameplay loop.
- Led a team of 3 programmers, communicating design vision, requirements, prioritising implementation tasks and conducting scheduled and ad-hoc reviews to resolve gameplay issues within 6 months production deadline.
- Managed the gamplay QA process, including bug indentification, reproduction, task allocation and reporting, ensuring issues were resolved in timely manner.
- Worked closely with programmers throughout implementation to rapidly identify design and technical contrainst, iterate on solutions and maintain gameplay quality through to delivery.
Technical Documentation:
Warden Ascent
Turn-based Battle RPG
A f2p monster collection game based on the Pixelmon IP, featuring challanging turn-based combat and deep progression loop.
Role: Systems · Combat · Economy Designer
Key Results:
- Improved PvP consistency: Identified inconsistent player experiences caused by weak PvP bot matchmaking through playtesting and player feedback. Designed and implemented rank-based matchmaking rules that evaluated the player's PvP rank and assigned a bot within a defined ± rank range, creating more consistent and fairer encounters.
- Increased early campaign completion by 15%: Analysed campaign progression data and identified low completion rates during D1. Investigated encounter pacing and reward structure as potential friction points, then rebalanced both to improve the early-game progression experience, resulting in a 15% improvement in early campaign completion.
- Improved premium unit progression and perceived value: Identified inconsistencies in how premium/gacha units progressed through evolution, which weakened their perceived value. Redesigned their ability progression by introducing new utilities and mechanics at each evolution stage, receiving positive internal playtest feedback and team approval.
- Improved FTUE onboarding: Analysed the onboarding funnel to identify player drop-off points, then iterated on the onboarding flow and tutorial tooltip system based on analytics and funnel insights, achieving 75%+ D0 completion among new users.
- Established foundational game systems: Owned and directed end-to-end development and shipping of core systems across social features, PVP matchmaking, Battlepass and FTUE (tutorial). These systems formed the foundation of the core player experience and contined to support the game post-launch.
Key Contributions:
- Owned systems design across gameplay mechanics, progression, economy and monetisation, taking features from concept and paper design through prototyping, implementation, tuning and balancing in Unreal Engine.
- Designed encounter and combat systems for campaign and PvP bots that encouraged players to optimise team composition and loadouts to maximise reward outcomes.
- Pitched the game's vision across concept, gameplay, story and functionality, translating the overall vision into actionable gameplay and system requirements.
- Iterated designs through evidence, combining analytics, funnel data, playtesting, UX testing and qualitative feedback to identify problems, form design hypotheses and validate solutions.
- Produced technical design documentation and identified opportunities to improve existing features and design processes, working with the team to refine implementation and player experience.
Technical Documentation:
Bake N' Switch
Single-player / Co-Op, Strategy Puzzle
Embark on a 'Bun Solo' single-player adventure or team up with other Bakers to catch, throw, and bake a'dough'rable living bread creatures!
Role: System · AI · Encounter Designer
Key Results:
- Designed spatially driven combat challanges: Designed and prototyped level layouts and puzzles that challanges player spatial awareness, positioning, and AI management for optimal high score requirements.
- Resolved critical difficulty spikes: Identified and resolved critical difficulty spikes through internal and closed door public playtests, tuning enemy pacing via dedicated enemy AI manager data assets and successfully brining the single-player experience through end-to-end QA.
- Delivered 80+ levels of endgame content: Owned and shipped 80+ levels of late game content for Stormy Mode, designing and tuning difficulty progression to sustain player engagement throught the endgame.
- Created emergent co-op interactions: Owned AI design to enchance co-op experience, creating disruptive enemy behaviours (negative score, movement immobilization, dough stealing) alongside unpredicatble friendly dough AI to create choatic, emergent gameplay and shape player interactions and decision-making.
- Established foundational game systems: Owned and directed end-to-end development and shipping of core systems across win/loss conditions, character class abilities, dough stacking and AI manager.
Key Contributions:
- Prototyped level layouts and puzzle mechanics using Unreal visual scripting.
- Identify improvements to existing features and design process.
- Feature ownership of post-game unlockable hard mode encounter and balancing design.
Multiversus
Multiversus
Platform Fighter
MultiVersus is a free-to-play fighting game developed by Player First Games and published by Warner Bros. Games.
Role: Technical Design Auditing
Key Contributions:
- Verify pre-launch roster balance integrity with frame analysis.
- Playtest character rosters in early builds and identified improvements to balancing and team synergies.
- Consolidates improvement report and submit for client review.
- Design and draft fighters' movesets for the post-launch roster of Multiversus.
MultiVersus is a free-to-play fighting game developed by Player First Games and published by Warner Bros. Games.
Role: Technical Design Auditing
Key Contributions:
- Verify pre-launch roster balance integrity with frame analysis.
- Playtest character rosters in early builds and identified improvements to balancing and team synergies.
- Consolidates improvement report and submit for client review.
- Design and draft fighters' movesets for the post-launch roster of Multiversus.
Sniper Ghost Warrior: Contract
Stealth, Tactical Shooter
Play as a paid assassin; a hit man for hire. With hundreds of ways to take down a wide range of targets, Contracts offers precise, strategic sniping gameplay at its absolute best.
Role: System Designer
Key Contributions: - Define the balancing and uniqueness of sniper rifles through statistical adjustments in CryEngine.
- Iterated on designs using playtests, UX testing, and feedback from both internal and clients.
Stealth, Tactical Shooter
Play as a paid assassin; a hit man for hire. With hundreds of ways to take down a wide range of targets, Contracts offers precise, strategic sniping gameplay at its absolute best.
Role: System Designer
Key Contributions:
- Define the balancing and uniqueness of sniper rifles through statistical adjustments in CryEngine.
- Iterated on designs using playtests, UX testing, and feedback from both internal and clients.
Odyssey Of Phoenix
Action, Adventure RPG
Action, Adventure RPG
This is an education game project aimed to introduce the player with basic concepts of Object Oriented Programming (OOP). The gameplay is inspired by The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening.
Role: Game Designer
Key Contributions:
- Designed and implemted all the levels on "Tiled" map editing software.
- Produced design documentation for game features, in-game dialogues and objectives.
- Designed enemy behaviors and boss attack choreography.
- Iterated on designs using playtests.
