Design Work
Over the years I have worked on many different design projects, from F2P mobile games through to RPGs.
I have worked with several teams as they evolved from start-ups to established companies and have experience in how that changes a working environment (both internally within the team and externally for the company) with a greater focus put on publicity and press relations whilst maintaining focus on development.
Having spent some time as a freelance game developer and artist I understand how important it is to make sales as well as producing quality work.
I’ve listed many of the more notable projects that I have worked on in the past, along with some of the challenges I came across whilst working on them
I currently work for Kwalee (a games company started by Codemasters’ original founder) as a content designer on their latest mobile game. The app has recently received a soft launch in Australia this summer and should be coming to the UK relatively soon.
The game itself is a community based Quiz game with F2P elements. Players create and share their own quizzes and compete against friends and strangers, using various power-ups, whilst collecting EXP to boost their ranking in themed categories.
The challenge was to create quiz content that was polished, fun and unique to entertain quiz players, but also demonstrate how easy the quiz editor is to use in order help inspire users to create their own quizzes.
This was achieved by making use of my own photos in an attempt to showcase that you didn’t need professional design skills to create images to be used in quizzes.
Working from home also provided its own set of challenges, as the majority of the team are based in Leamington Spa. I stay in contact via Skype, Google Docs/sheets and weekly meetings.
As a freelancer I often have to accommodate new ways of working and staying in contact with my team. I am quick to adapt to new schedules and working practices, and am well-versed in organising my own time and priorities.
With a much smaller team working on this game I had to contend with a different set of problems.
Poncho is a puzzle platformer where players use a unique 'Shift' mechanic to jump in and out of the background.
Whilst my main role was lead artist, because the team was so small, I often branched out into other areas of development.
As Poncho was a puzzle platformer it was crucial that players found the puzzles both tricky and fun, so a large amount of time was involved with testing the layouts of each level. In order to do this I played a part in showcasing the game at some of the local expos around England during development in 2014.
During these events I would observe and discuss the game with members of the public, press and other Game Dev’s in order to improve and perfect the balancing and pacing of the game using direct player feedback. These sessions became an invaluable source of information not just for this game but also for future projects.
After the game’s completion our focus turned to publicity. Again, due to the small team, I had to take on several new roles with much of my time focused on opening communications with press and Youtubers in order to gain coverage for our game, through Previews, Reviews and Let’s Plays and also encouraging fans to share their love of the game through social media.
The game was published by Rising Star Games and featured at PAX 2015 in Seattle and EGX Rezzed 2015 in Birmingham; both times it was part of Nintendo’s Nindies collection.
It is currently available on PC, Mac and PS4 with PSVita and WiiU versions coming in the near future.
Since release it has gained positive reviews.
When I started working on this project much of the basic design ground work was already done. I was tasked with taking the original art assets and improving them to the standard that they are now.
One major challenge I faced was absorbing as much information about the project as I could, whilst maintaining a high level of quality work. As a newcomer to the team everyone else was familiar with the project and the target goals, so it was crucial that I kept up to date with tasks and objectives outside of my assigned role in order to maintain a high level of understanding for the whole project.
I’m a strong believer that people should have, at the very least, an understanding of all the stages that take place within the creative process, not just the subjects for which they are directly responsible.
For this project I was commissioned to take a concept already decided upon by my client, and turn it into a functioning game design within a couple of months.
The concept for the game is a construction Sim where the player has to build a mansion full of monsters and traps in order to lure and kill various visitors. The design had a strong leaning towards the humorous side of the genre with players being rewarded for following typical horror clichés.
Working with a second designer it was our task to provide the programmer with details, stats and figures to give life and purpose to the gameplay. This would involve all sorts of tasks, such as…
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Creating in game formulas to calculate stats for anything from combat to construction
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Designing upgrade trees to provide the player with clear but multiple paths to levelling up
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Detailing the strengths/weaknesses of each in game unit, along with its personality and A.I. traits
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Listing the gameplay goals of a sandbox game, providing the player with some kind of structure to their playthrough.
This game also featured at EGX Rezzed 2014.
Side Projects:
In between doing freelance work for other people’s games I often spend my time designing smaller prototype games and working on smaller projects of my own. Many of these smaller ideas, that didn’t work at first, often end up evolving into much better projects.
I love to use these opportunities to work on something unique and different. For example I’m currently working with a programmer to push boundaries and create a 50 player single screen multiplayer experience. Players will control their character on the main screen by using their smart phone.
The end concept is to place the game in Pubs and Gaming Bars on a big screen and allow guests to drop in and out of gameplay whilst competing against each other simultaneously.
A single player version of the game can be found here…
Another project I’m working on is a mobile based ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ style game, where the play has to reply to incoming messages from several contacts to progress the story. The twist is that the game is time sensitive, so if you receive a message late at night, or whilst at work and don’t manage to respond in time, you could change the course of the story.
Many of these ideas exist as paper prototypes, card games and written documents, as I find it useful to store and organise all my ideas and concepts, both good and bad, so as to learn from my mistakes and improve upon my successes.
You can generally find updates of my side projects on my twitter...
https://twitter.com/matwekpixel
I also have an interest in creative writing and have in the past provided flavour text for various games, usually as background lore or story setting.
In addition to my Game Dev work I also have a background in mathematics, with an A-level in both Maths and Statistics.