Here you can find some examples of my game design work.
Please Hate Me is a visual novel that brings a twist to the dating sim subgenre.Made as a final project for university using Ren'py.The player has to make the game characters dislike them instead of aiming for their affection like it is usually seen in this genre of games.Currently a demo and only some core scenes are currently playable:
- 2 love? interests
- 3 endingsAvailable on itch.ioOther than the assets the game is entirely made by me.Read more here
Plot Armor is a 2D platformer game that was made for the 'Game Off 2022' game jam - theme cliché.A game where you level up through almost dying.You're the main character, and as the main character, you have plot armor. Even if you die, not only do you get back up, but you're somehow stronger now!Available on itch.ioThis game was made in collaboration with a friend. I handled the level design and placements and he handled the coding and UI design.Read more here
Maze Haven is a top-down maze action game for Android.The game tells the story of a lost rabbit trying to find their way back to their owner, with scattered pieces of their past.
The player has to use their quick thinking and ingenuity to avoid the enemies and get out of the mazes.Currently only 3 levels available (easy, medium, hard).Available on itch.ioOther than the assets the game is entirely made by me.Read more here
Finding Teddy is a 3D horror game made as a group project for an assignment.The player will act as an eleven-year-old child that lost their teddy bear somewhere in the house, but they do not remember in what room. Alone in the house, the player starts in the hallway and makes their way around each room trying to find Teddy.Only my contribution to the game is currently available.Available on itch.ioOther than the assets the room and mechanics are entirely designed by me.Read more here
Plot Armor
ConceptPlot Armor is a 2D platformer game that was made for the 'Game Off 2022' game jam - theme cliché.A game where you level up through almost dying.You're the main character, and as the main character, you have plot armor. Even if you die, not only do you get back up, but you're somehow stronger now!At the beginning of the game the player can choose between 3 different plot armors: Friendship, Rage and PreparednessFriendship - Upon death the player gets flashbacks of all of their friends and family and respawns with more health;
Rage - Upon death the player randomly powers up for no reason and gains more damage and speed;
Preparedness - Before the fight the player somehow figured out everything that would happen so, to trick the enemy, they send a clone which drops a bomb upon death as 'it was all part of the plan';These armors can only be triggered 3 times in the game so dying in every level will not lead to a win.This game was made in collaboration with a friend. I handled the level design and placements and he handled the coding and UI design.Available on itch.io
Maze Haven
ConceptMaze Haven is a top-down maze action game where the player has to use their quick thinking and ingenuity to avoid the enemies and get the player character out of the mazes. The game tells the story of a lost rabbit trying to find their way back to their owner, with scattered pieces of their past being shown after each level.Reason for making this gameA reason for choosing a maze game is that mazes improve cognitive skill, especially for children. Navigating a maze makes use of a range of key cognitive skills including spatial learning and memory, working memory, decision making, and general reasoning ability; Solving mazes relies upon a number of key brain regions, especially those involved with executive decision making. (Adam F., 2019).
Another reason is that mazes are often used in psychology experiments on animals, and I thought that would really fit the story of the lost bunny and psychological trauma it experiences in the past.Implementation
The levels are created using a basic level loader script where a number is assigned a different sprite taking the form of a big matrix made by hand rather than them being procedurally generated.Available on itch.io
Finding Teddy
Concept
The player will act as an eleven-year-old child that lost their teddy bear somewhere in the house, but they do not remember in what room. Alone in the house, the player starts in the hallway and makes their way around each room trying to find Teddy.The game started off as being based on the idea of an escape room but the “room” being the whole house. Me and my collegues then expanded on it and came up with the idea of having the player character being a young child, searching around the house for their missing teddy bear with the whole house at their disposal. So, the game’s focus is about “What would a child do?” and “How does a child see the world?” when left home alone with their imagination. We also wanted the game to have some horror elements that would incite the player to realize that children are more scared of simple things. With that in mind the rooms will have places where the lights are not turned on, those areas being inaccessible because of the character being too scared to step into the darkness, making the player think of ways to enter those spots.
The whole game is made by a total of 4 people, including me but only my contribution to the game is currently available on my itch.io.Available on itch.io
Please Hate Me
ConceptA visual novel that brings a twist to the dating sim subgenre, where the player takes the role of Kya, a freshman college student whose whole family has been cursed for several generations, making all of the boys that she thinks are attractive fall in love with her. This curse lasts until she finds her “one true love” and dates them, but that is not what she wants.What makes this game different from other dating sims is that the player charact doesn’t actually want to end up dating anyone, even if it meant breaking the curse. Because of this the player’s main goal is to make the other characters dislike them, lower their affection, instead of raising it like in other games of this genre, making this the unique selling point of the game.Reason for making this gameI have chosen to pursue and commit to this particular project because I have had this basic initial idea of an ‘un-dating’ sim or game for quite a few years before university. For a long time I have thought that the romance genre in visual novels has been completely overused and is extremely predictable, act nice to a character, see what they like and maybe give them gifts and you easily win their love. The characters themselves also seemed to always follow over-used personality tropes (the tsundere one, the smart glasses one, the playboy, etc.). I wanted to see a game where you don’t try to make them like you by going for the obvious dialog choices, I wanted a game where you need to do the opposite, find what they don’t like, make them hate you, make it more realistic.Implementation
The game is created using Twine for writing the script and Ren'py as the game engine, which I both learned just for this project.Currently the demo contains 3 core scenes for each character totaling to 9 scenes, including the endings.The "affection score" mechanic is a feature that indicates to the player exactly how much the characters currently like them, between 0 and 100, 0 being ‘absolutely despises you’ and 100 being ‘madly in love’. Every time the player spends time with a character, or they choose a dialog option, the score will increase or decrease, depending on whether they liked the choice/action or not. To make the indicator more unique and dynamic, not only will the score change, but the colour of the heart as well depending on the number (black -> blue -> green -> orange -> red).
The last three colours being green, orange and red, was done as a way to represent traffic lights. If the score is in the green (go), the good ending will be achieved, orange (yellow/wait), the player is warned that the score is above the good ending threshold, and red (stop), to signify that the player is on the wrong path and will most likely get one of the bad endings.Available on itch.io