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Team Lead and Designer

January 2024-May 2025

BeatTown is a wrestling based tactics game where you use your wrestling prowess to solve mundane problems and rebuild your hometown.

It was made by a team of me and 7 other students from Indiana University's Game Design program.

Responsibilities

Level Design

I designed multiple levels in pre-production that were iterated and tested on paper and then Miro.

One of them was a level where you saved the lumberjack from beavers that were trying to steal his logs. It was cut due to a lack of time.

Action Systems

Worked extensively with my other designer and the rest of the team to establish what the ground rules for our game would be.

We then created multiple iterations of action systems that could fit within a 5x5 wrestling ring.

Design Macro

Planned out the game from start to finish in a Design Macro.

This allowed us to trim down on content as we went to accomadate any delays in production.

Playtesting

Through public university events and external conventions, we are able to test our game with random participants.

Using the feedback from our playtesters, we were able to make changes that made the game more fun down the road.

Task Tracking

As team lead, I was responsible for keeping track of progress and completion of tasks across multiple disciplines, which I did through Notion and daily standups.

Milestone/Sprint Planning

Every month we have a large milestone deadline that I plan out in Notion and break up into sprints.

Process

Pitched version of BeatTown

Shark Tank Pitch

The game was pitched as a wrestling tactics game at the IU Shark Tank Event by our sound designer and programmer.

The game made it through on the wacky premise of wrestling in scenarios that were completely ridiculous.

Pre-production

I joined the team in pre-production alongside 3 other new members
Me and the other designer got to work on how to translate wrestling into a 5x5 arena while making actions feel tactical.
We were also in need of leadership so about 1 month in, I took over the production side of things

Miro board full of different ideas for actions.

Two actions that were essentially identical and solved two niche problems

Challenges with "Actions"

One thing we learned very quickly was that even defining the vocabulary in your game can be complicated.
Move is an "Action" that the player has access to, so we cannot call actions moves.
We also struggled with what feels like wrestling. Obviously a jump off the top rope would be super cool, but is it feasible?

The Final Version

We went through combos, signature moves and many more cool/costly ideas before settling on 4 basic moves.

Move
Punch
Swing
Push

While way more simplistic than everyone's aspirations, it allowed us to have a baseline that was balanced and functional.
From there we could add any moves if they were helpful in solving a future level's problem.