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Plushie Blaze
This game project was done by a student team of 14 developers for our Alt.Ctrl or Alternative Controller class.
Plushie Blaze is an open-world dragon simulator where you tilt a stuffed animal to fly and squeeze it to breathe fire. Try to get as many points as possible to satisfy your hungry dragon's bottomless appetite.
The work I did on this project varied heavily. From Systems and Level Design to 3D printing and video editing.
My involvement began with research into Norse mythology to accurately represent names and locations within the levels. From there, I worked with concept artists to create artwork for each level, including color schemes, environmental themes, and architectural styles. I then began working with the other Level designers on the team to design 2D layouts for each level, excluding Level 2. From there, I started molding the landscape to match our designs and concepts and blocked out interactable areas. After that, I worked with the 3D Artists, Environmental Artists, and VFX Artists to bring the levels to life and placed the majority of assets in the levels. The final part I was involved in as Level Design Lead was coordinating playtesting to receive and redesign specific areas according to feedback. All this was done while simultaneously running Quality Assurance checks throughout the Entire Project. The last thing I did, and one that I am proud of, was the creation of an extensive Developer Gymnasium for all components of the entire project. As shown in the screenshots below, the gym consisted of designated areas for all types of testing. These include Movement Metrics and Scales, Rift Weapon Ranges, Enemy Arena, Environmental Assets import museum, the Engineering testing grounds, Hall of Materials, VFX, and music.
As Associate Producer, I acted as a liaison between the two Producers and the rest of the team. I helped to coordinate and run weekly and bi-weekly meetings. I collaborated with each strike team to implement game elements such as engineering movement mechanics and interactable abilities such as checkpoints and other trigger points, editing and placement of Niagara VFX systems, and finding and scripting a variety of minor SFX. Lastly, I did two things I enjoyed: Playtesting and Visual Storytelling. As I was constantly playing, I gathered information about our game's progression and visual indicators to share with the team. My version of visual storytelling for this project was via a Miro board that I created for the team to compile all of our concept art references. This served as the master visual style guide for all aspects of our game, ranging from levels, models, Norse research, and more. I enjoyed being that board's curator and helping convey the vision for the game to others.
My work on Narrative includes writing many lines of dialogue, instructional UI elements, and lore excerpts for the collectible Datapad logs in the game. Working closely with the team's Writer, we crafted a unique storyline with many references to Norse Mythology. I then took upon myself the task of dialogue trigger placement throughout all levels.