Background

About Me

I am a passionate student when it comes to themes I like. When it came to choose a carreer, after deciding poorly the first time, I had to reevaluate what I wanted to do. After figuring out that videogames had shaped me to who I am now since I was a child, I started to look on how to become a game maker and I stumbled upon this degree.

In this degree, I got to try out different fields, and everytime, design started to stand out more and more. It became more obvious when the specific game design subjects came along, and I just fell in love. Later on, I started to look for a more concrete role, as "I am a designer" was too general. Soon enough, I discovered what I love especifically:

• Character Design
• Narrative Design
• Community Management, in general

with special mention to Animation, which I found out I wasn't half bad at, and enjoy making but then decided it wasn't for me.

Happiness is only real when shared.

• Christopher McCandless

I am a people's man, who enjoys interacting and talking with people a lot. I enjoy solving misunderstandings among people and finding quick solutions to sudden problems, as well as reading the backstories of my favorite characters and the worldbuilding around them.

Being part of this project was a really important step on my journey as a game designer, since the biggest teams I had worked until now were of around 5 people. I got to be part of decisions that shaped a few aspects of the game (mainly character design and character model supervising), and I feel happy about it, otherwise, worked a bit on everything design related.

It doesn't have to be a world changing game to change the world of the people making it

• Daniel Floyd, Game Designer and ex-Narrator for the channel "Extra Credits"

Hard Skills

• Unreal Engine 4
• Unity
• Twine
• Photoshop
• Tiled

Soft Skills

• Motivation
• Communication
• Team Work
• Public Speaking
• Creativity
• Adaptability
• Quick Problem Solving
• General Social Skills
• Empathy

Contribution

Project Overview

On this project, I had the honor to be part of our talented group of Designers. I worked all around with them setting the bases of the game, the story, the characters, the enemies, etc.

Main Tasks

Boss Design - First Concept

Aram Galarza and I started defining the boss of the game, a boss had to be remembered and had to present a direct test of your player's skills. Although Aram kept that as his main role as the boss designer, while I started to work on different fields, I'm glad I helped creating the version we have of Rabban The Beast.

Extra Characters

I worked with Nuria Lamonja on making 2 extra characters and their backstories in case we had time to implement them. Even though they didn't make it to the final game, I love the concepts we ended up with and would have loved to see them come to life. Here is a small peek at the moodboard of Hunar, what would have been our muscular Tinkerer.

First Draft of Spice Management

I was in charge of making a first draft of how the spice, the resource of our game, would work in our game, including how much would be given to the player, how much would they would spend on upgrading skills and abilities, etc.

Cutscenes and Storyboarding

Together with Aitor Alvarez, we were in charge of making the storyboarding of the cutscnees that would be on the game. We made quite a few quick drafts so the artist had good directions on how to make and render the actual cutscenes. Later on the development, I was assigned to fix and change the storyboards given the time constraints and tweaks on the story that needed to be done. Here a small peak of storyboard cutscenes that made it to the end, at least the ones made by me, to see the final result that our artist worked so hard on, check out the profiles of Victor Jara, Marti Davicino and Carles Lopéz.

Testing Sesion Surveys

Due to time constraints, we couldn't make a formal playtesting sesion. I was in charge of making the play testing document, with the surveys and the procedure to follow as test organizers.

Dialogues and Tutorials

I was in charge of implementing the dialogues and tutorials inside the engine, editing the previous dialogues we had because it didn't fit our new need (we had dialogues for three levels, due to limitations we could only implement two). I changed, edited, and implemented a first iteration of the tutorials inside the level as well. Our Design Lead, Maria Calle, gave new indications on the tutorials according to the few testings the team was able to do, and the dialogues had to change yet again to fit the needs of the last iteration of the story.

All in all, it was an entertaining job to do since I had to be on the characters shoes to think what would they say on what spots and mix that with what were we able to put in the engine following the limitations our programmers warned us about.

Unity and Engine Testing and Debugging

Given the amount of time I spent among different tasks interacting and using the engine, I also helped find bugs and errors for the programmers to fix.

I also tested on the Unity port to find values and changes that needed to be done on the overall game.

Supervision of Model Creation

The task was not assigned to me but I was endeared to stay in contact with the modelers, mainly Marti Davicino, to supervise, give examples and explanations from a designer's point of view, as well as to give and ask opinions about character models. It was one of the tasks I liked the most since I gave a few ideas and helpful feedback on the process of modeling.

Secondary Tasks

The RTS Approach

Together with Aram Galarza we made a complete study about one posible approach to the main gameplay

Level One in the Engine (one of many iterations)

Participated in one of the first attemps of translating the blockouts of my colleagues into early versions of the engine. Given the unstability of the engine at the moment, I gave the idea of doing the level on another program and then importing it on the engine instead of doing it on the engine itself, which later helped anyone who needed to do blockouts.

Support on Making the Level 3 on Blender

I helped Arnau Lucena a bit with the creation of the whole fbx of the second level.

Implementing Final Level in the Engine

I spent a week trying to put the final level in the engine, due to the instability at the time of said engine, I had to start again a few times until the idea of doing the fbx from blender and import it directly to the engine came along. That way, we could build the level without fighting the instability of the engine.

Help in Unity

I helped a bit with the implementation of the port to Unity for testing purposes. I didn't do much more than changing a few values and testing a bit before we starting heavily testing.

Values from the Unity Port to the Engine

I helped and mostly just supervised Aitor Alvarez on the procces of translating the values the team set on the Unity testing straight into our engine.

Projects

Tricaltion

This was part of a Design delivery I did in conjuction with Aram Galarza and Arnau Lucena, and I am quite proud of the result. It was an exercise on worldbuilding, character creation and the making of an adventure inside the world we created with the characters we made.

You can see here the drive folder of the whole project. And here a sneak peek of the map:

Artemis 21

Artemis 21 was born on a Game Jam I made with a close group of friends, we call ourselves Bruhmentium Inc. when we work together. We are Guillem Álava, Sergi Colomer, Arnau Lucena, Aram Galarza and me. I am quite proud of what we managed to assemble on the 2 days we had of our first Game Jam. I was in charge of naming characters, writing the story and overall design as well as directing team dynamics.

If you want to check it out for yourself, you can find it published in itch.io.

Stairway to Nirvana

This is a project that we delivered on the Video Game Design 2 subject. I want to highlight the design of the cards and the concept of the game, which is where I worked the most. I liked the result and my design work on balancing the game. Here you can see the final slides we did.