SHARDFALL PC & VR
ROLE
Game Designer
DESCRIPTION
Shardfall blends boxing and cardio workouts in a fantasy world with action adventure gameplay.
Fitness gestures including punching, running and jumping are all tracked using the Quell Impact (hardware)/ Meta Quest.
Shardfall was developed as a launch title for the Quell Impact, then later ported to Oculus Quest.
RESPONSIBILITIES
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Owned significant features including enemy types, tutorial systems and standalone game modes.
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Created detailed GDDs including mockups, user flows and future scalability.
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New game modes, obstacles, enemy behaviours, season pass, haptics, UI, VR port adaptations
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Provided design colleagues with solutions-based feedback for their GDDs.
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Deep experience of procedural level creation. Reduced level iteration time through optimised tile system rules, to rapidly generate cohesive levels for rogue-like gameplay.
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100+ level tiles
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Obstacle concepts, pitches and Unity prototypes
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Used proprietary enemy AI tooling to set up, improve and balance enemies.
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Helped design and iterate tooling on based on design needs.
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Designed and balanced meta systems such as perks and XP systems to deliver a rewarding experience for players and enhance player engagement and retention.
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UI design for front-end additions and to support standalone game modes.
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Design ownership of tutorial systems.
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Level design and flow
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Tutorialisation NPC design and set up
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Distribution across the campaign and menus
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Design mentoring including defining goals, creating learning resources, weekly syncs, progress check-ins and providing constructive feedback.
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Led bi-weekly brainstorming workshops, resulting in new features for live service updates.
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Organised and conducted external and internal playtests to propose telemetry-informed design solutions.
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Used insights to improve tutorial completion rate by 20%.
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Collaborated with game engineers and machine learning team to improve gesture detection algorithms.
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Multi-discipline collaboration to risk-assess, scope and prioritise tasks.
YEAR
2022 - Present
GENRE
Action Adventure, fitness gaming, rogue-like
SOFTWARE USED
Unity
Spline and tile creation, terrain editing, obstacle prototyping, enemy set up, perk creation, UI set up,
balancing.
Fork
Git client used for version control with PC and VR Git repositories.
Figma
UI/UX mockups.
Confluence
Game design documentation.
Shortcut
Used to organise and monitor sprint progress. All tasks and milestones were tracked and stored.
Fork
Design Document Examples
MVP Quick Play Game Modes
Obstacle prototyping
Enemy behaviour
GAMEPLAY
Shardfall: Quell Impact
Shardfall: VR
Each 20 minute campaign level is split into two major parts: Combat and Traversal.
During Combat players face enemies and use punches and spells in boxing style combat. The player must jump and duck to evade certain attacks.
In Traversal the player must run at a target speed to activate and collect Rage Orbs. By jumping, ducking, sprinting and steering, players must avoid path obstacles whilst keeping up their run pace.
Blessings are buffs which are chosen throughout a session.
Enraged Zones are areas of increased fitness intensity, with stronger, health regenerating enemies and harder traversal obstacle distribution.
VR Review: KaleahVR
GAME // GALLERY
HARDWARE // QUELL IMPACT
SET UP
For Shardfall PC, the player wears a belt containing a Chest Pod, a device which detects steps, ducks and jumps.
Resistance bands are attached to the wrist straps and the back of the belt to increase workout quality.
The player holds a controller in each hand which tracks punches, blocks and chest presses.