As a proactive, people-first producer and game designer with a technical and project management (agile as well as structured) background, I make fun, convention-defying games for web and PC in my spare time. I have experience leading teams of up to 12 across disciplines including programmers, artists, designers, sound designers, and composers.
I have experience working with Trello, Wrike, Confluence, Microsoft Office 365, Jira and Scrum for project management and production, as well as GameMaker, Godot, Unity, GIMP and Audacity for game design. I have taken part in multiple successful game jams to hone my skills with, as well as working on independent projects with multiple teams.
Gentle (g)host
Role:
Producer
Engine:
Unity
Platform:
Web
As part of the GMTK jam, I managed a team of 12 people, over the course of 48 hours to
produce a game based on the theme of Roles Reversed. In this submission I took the role
of Producer and supporting game designer bringing such a large team together to carry
out the initial brainstorming of ideas using Miro, then narrowing down all the ideas
by getting everyone to do a quick pitch then vote on the preferred idea. After this I
assigned leaders for each discipline to help coordinate the teams (multiple artists,
audio and programmers) and prioritising tasks. Due to the very short turn around time
I organised the Miro board so that everyone could have tasks in their own spaces on the
board while seeing the progress of the project as a whole. Despite the very large team
and short deadline, we managed to submit in time and the final game came out exactly
as we intended with only minor bugs making it through in the submission. Overall the
game received plenty for the art style and fun gameplay as well as praise from a
prominent Youtuber who praised the fact that such a large team managed such a high
quality submission.
I put together a team of people to work on multiple games together that would go beyond
a standard game jam game. As part of our final project together, we made an online party
game to be played with up to 8 people on PC. I set our project deadline for 4 weeks, in
which time we came up with potential ideas, level and game design was worked on using a
template I developed in Confluence to work closer with our designer and Jira to track
the project tasks with our programmer, artists and composer. This was a challenging
project because it was not only a 3D online game, but also my first time working with a
game designer. With my dedicated producer role in this project, I managed to find new
and better ways of working which meant we were able to finish on time and pick up new
skills and ways of working by the end of this. Overall we were happy with the outcome
although we did observe some improvements to bugs and art style which we could improve
on if we had more time. Despite that the overall sentiment was positive and final
product achieved what we had set out to achieve.
In the first game of a newly formed team put together to work on games that went beyond
game jam style games, I lead the team on a one week challenge to work on a short and
simple game to help get everyone accustomed to working together. The outcome of this
was this game, in which I took the role of producer and game designer of this infinite
runner style game. As part of the team I worked with two programmers each focusing on
different aspects of the game, as well as an audio designer, a composer and two artists.
As our first project together, I wanted to keep the scope small but challenging enough
to prove the team had what it took to make larger more challenging projects after this.
Taking the role of producer I organised the teams tasks with Jira, documented the game
in Confluence and setup a Discord server with automations for when builds were ready
to be tested by the team. The final game came out very well and proved a good spring
board into our other projects that we worked together and helped shape a way of working
that we maintained for the games that followed this.
As part of the VimJam 2 jam, I worked in two teams of four, over the course of 10 days to
produce a game with a requirement to include a Boss and the theme of "On the Edge". This
was one of the submissions that I made to the jam. I took the role of Game Designer and
Producer, building out the game mechanics, documenting the gameplay flow and assigning
and prioritising tasks across the team. As part of this, I produced a Trello board and
Spreadsheet to communicate the mechanics of the game and audio tracks needed. The final
game came out very close to the intended vision with only minor changes made to tweak
the gameplay flow and allow for a timely submission. Overall the game received plenty of
praise for the gameplay flow and difficulty ramp up as well as gaining a high overall
score and placing in the jam. I also had positive feedback teammates on the organisation
for the team (handling both programmer, artist and audio members well within the given time).
As part of the VimJam 2 jam, I worked in two teams of four, over the course of 10 days to
produce a game with a requirement to include a Boss and the theme of "On the Edge". This
was one of the submissions that I made to the jam. I took the role of Game Designer and
Producer, building out the game mechanics, documenting the gameplay flow and assigning
and prioritising tasks across the team. As part of this, I produced a Trello board and
Spreadsheet to communicate the mechanics of the game and audio tracks needed. The final
game came out very close to the intended vision with only minor changes made to tweak
the gameplay flow and allow for a timely submission. Overall the game received praise
for the use of the theme and mechanics as well as positive comments on the quantity and
quality of available content. My teammates were also pleased with the final game and
the overall running of the jam, with comments on how closely we managed to stick to our
vision.
As part of the week long Godot Wild Jam game jam, I submit a game in a team of 3 based on the theme of "Family".
The game is a top down single screen puzzle game where you control a duck and it's ducklings to reach the goal
for each level. I took the role of Game/Level Designer, Producer and handling Audio/SFX for the game.
Part of this process involved a brainstorm period where I came up with 5 possible ideas and my team mate
came up with 3 additional ideas. From this we whittled down the ideas until we had our final idea, I then came
up with game play ideas which, along with my team mate we agreed on features that were critical to the game and
features that would be nice to implement if we had time to implement. I organised a daily check in and laid
down a structure for meetings, a Trello board and Discord server to discuss progress and share ideas.
While my team mate carried out the build of the game mechanics I created paper designs for 13 levels which
I play tested physically and proofed against my team mate. Once the game mechanics were complete,
I implemented 10 levels based on an iterative approach from the 13 paper designs and what worked in game
versus what had worked in the paper designs. After various play tests and tweaks to the levels, I added
sound and we submitted with the majority of the features we wanted to implement completed. The jam submission
received positive reviews with many praising the level design. After the jam I expanded the level count to 20
smoothing out the difficulty curve and adding extra challenges for anyone that made it to the end.
