Lead Designer & Software Engineer, 2019-2020
During my graduating year at the University of California, Santa Cruz, I pitched Kangarumble to the class of 2020 to be one of the senior capstone game projects. The pitch was simple: a competitive local-multiplayer game in which up to four kangaroos take short turns trying to stomp on each others' heads. I developed a digital prototype in GameMaker, and proposed the final project to be built in Unity.
I recruited a team of 12 developers, including a producer, artists, an animator, programmers, a level designer, and musicians. I served as the game's lead designer, as well as one of the team's programmers.
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Being the lead game designer on Kangarumble was incredibly fun. The core design goal was to achieve a party game that was impeccably balanced; a competitive game that gave every player a fair chance at victory. I carefully tweaked gameplay variables and discussed feedback with play-testers until game rounds regularly ended with extremely close scores.
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One of my main projects as a programmer was engineering the user interface. I knew the game's presentation needed a strong sense of flow, so I made sure nearly every piece of UI incorporated an element of motion. I learned plenty about Unity's canvas system, as well as using C# to create kinetic typography!
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Halfway through development, the COVID pandemic prevented our team from meeting in person. We continued work remotely, but had to come up with alternate methods of play-testing our local multiplayer game.
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The Kangarumble team was awarded for Excellence in Production and Peer Choice Game at the UCSC Games Showcase, 2020. I am enormously proud of this team for making a killer game under ever-changing circumstances, all while keeping the work environment positive and safe.
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