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Role: Game Designer / Narrative Designer / Prototyping
Genre: Various
Team: Kuato Studios
Engine: Unity
Platform: Android / iOS / Console / PC / VR
Status: R&D
Description: Over the past year Kuato Studios entered into a heavy R&D phase, targetting a variety of different areas within the gaming industry, from development of a Steam-esque educational platform, to party games and IP based projects. Expanding our creative horizons was no easy task, and for months we devoted ourselves to concept ideation, pitch design and white-boxing. Utilising my prior experience coding within Unity I was able to take on a specialist role in developing prototypes for each of these concepts alongside the design process. During this time speed was the name of the game, and being able to turn out fully-fledged working prototypes under tight time constraints proved invaluable to the development process, allowing us to quickly iterate on design, and see the effects of those iterations in action.
Roles:
Game Designer:
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Developed Concepts from pitch to release candidate.
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Designed systems and features for new concepts based on fluctuating briefs.
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Designed and pitched multiple game projects.
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Created GDD's for multiple game projects.
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Create Pitch Decks for multiple game projects.
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Created feature maps based on Core Experience statements, using User Stories to help illustrate design decisions and justify their priority.
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Worked with external companies on development of new projects.
Prototyping:
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Designed, Whiteboxed and Prototyped new game concepts alongside the design process.
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Developed fully functional prototypes to help guide each projects’ direction, while also contributing towards securing external funding.
Narrative Designer:
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Developed world lore surrounding Kuato's mysterious new IP characters, defining history, culture and the method through which they interacts with the world.
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Developed Backstory and character lore for each IP character.
Prototype Examples:
Fast Food
Fast Food Prototype
Fast Food Final Product
- Fast Food Concept Deck
Description: Fast Food was a high octane learning experience geared towards teaching children types of food, the healthiness of those foods, and how to avoid be eating by a rampaging Shark / Dinosaur using Action Words.
Players use their voice to speak into existence food items from their cooler, and issue commands to their motly crew to either eat the food themselves, or launch it at the Monster. Feed the Monster enough junk food, and they'll become fat and unhealthy, collapsing to the ground in exhaustion.
Prototype Time: 1 Week 3 Days
Learning Platform (Adult Interface) - The Slumbering Village
- Slumbering Village Concept Deck
Description: Designed to allow the Parent control over their childs learning experience, the Slumbering Village Parent Companion App was an interactive play space, where parents can develop, grow and improve their village through collaboration with their children, using Quests to target key educational areas of language development.
Designed with games like Clash of the Clans, Animal Crossing, and other village sims, Parents advance their village by tending to their childs education, growing seeds which reward both the Parent and Child, and developing Virtue Structures to advance the amount of educational content available to their child in tandem with the language development.
Prototype Time: 3 Weeks
Learning Platform (Kids Interface) - Magikingdoms
Kids Platform V1 Prototype
Kids Platform V4 Prototype
Description: Taking the form of a quaint Open World for Children to explore, the Magikingdoms app focused around the narrative of a travelling troupe of actors, visiting villages and solving their problems through the use of language. Players control a caravan on the overworld, and are able to disembark to interact with various landmarks, before arriving at villages scattered throughout the map. Within each village, the Player is presented with a Playlist of Games to complete, the words from which will help save the village!
This concept began life as a static interactive menu with a screen transition, and evolved into the more complex Open World design as plans for the platform expanded. Above you can see the initial concept prototype, and then fourth prototype variant featuring an Open World, with a finalised interactive menu within the village scene.
Prototype Time: 4 Iterations across 3 months
Phoneme-nal Magic
- Phoneme-nal Magic Concept Deck
Description: With the aim of teaching Kids to sound out their words using Phonemes, Phoneme-nal magic asks players to help a forgetful magician with their show. Each trick the magician perform requires a unique magic word, but oh no! The Magicians forgotten what that word is! Read the Phonemes out loud to cast the spell, and help save the show!
Prototype Time: 5 Days
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