SHARDFALL PC & VR
ROLE & COMPANY
Game Designer | Quell
DESCRIPTION
Shardfall blends boxing and cardio workouts in a fantasy world with action adventure gameplay.
Shardfall was developed as a launch title for the Quell Impact, then later ported to Oculus Quest.
I contributed to Shardfall's development for over a year and four months leading up to its April 2024 launch, during which I delivered a live demo for GDC. Post release, I supported the game's live service updates for five months, and subsequently worked on porting and developing Shardfall: FitQuest VR, which launched on Meta Quest in January 2025.
RESPONSIBILITIES
Generalist designer with a focus in level design. Responsibilities also spanned across enemy AI implementation, systems, core and meta design and UX. See below for image examples and further detail.
Feature Ownership
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Level design, enemy types and standalone game modes for PC and VR.
- Designed all tutorial systems
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Distribution across the campaign and menus
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Tutorialisation NPC design and set up
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Level design and flow
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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 design.
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Obstacle concepts, pitches and Unity prototypes.
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Close collaboration with Lead and Mid Environmental Artists.
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Reduced level iteration time by 40% through optimised tile system rules to rapidly generate cohesive levels for rogue-like gameplay.
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100+ level tiles
- Utilised proprietary enemy AI tools in Unity to set up, iterate, and balance enemies for combat gameplay.
- Helped design and iterate tooling based on design needs.
- Designed and balanced meta systems such as perks and XP systems.
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Delivered a rewarding experience for players and enhance player engagement and retention.
- User flows.
- UI design for front-end additions and to support standalone game modes.
- Defining goals, creating learning resources, weekly progress syncs and providing constructive feedback.
- Led biweekly brainstorming workshops for live service features, contributing to retention increases of D1 (60% to 70%), D14 (38% to 46%) and D31 (30% to 35%).
- Organised and conducted external and internal playtests to propose telemetry-informed design solutions.
- Used insights to improve tutorial completion rate by 40%.
- Collaborated with game engineers and machine learning team to improve gesture detection algorithms.
Documentation
Level Design
Enemy AI
Meta & Progression Balancing
UI/UX Design
Design Mentoring
Live Service
Playtesting
GAMEPLAY
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
Enemy behaviour
Level Design Document Examples
Obstacle prototyping
New Level Tiles
GAMEPLAY
VR Review: KaleahVR
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.
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.