My Game Design Journey

I participated in a high-energy physical Game Jam hosted by Garena, which was a fantastic opportunity to meet and collaborate with other passionate game makers. Our team created Hero Landing, a fast-paced action game based on the “Superhero” theme, where players control five over-the-top rangers who divebomb into enemy territory with explosive, comedic results. I contributed to core gameplay design, character abilities, and tone, while the in-person format made collaboration and creative exchange especially engaging and fun.

I worked with a team of 8 designers on a 4 to 8 player elimination-style survival horror game where players control mischievous cats trying to escape the shadowy clutches of Death in a dark Victorian house. Built in Unity with Mirror Networking and Steamworks integration, the game blends tension, sabotage, and humor. I contributed to both design and implementation, helping shape mechanics like noise-based distractions, physics-driven object interactions, and the Reaper’s escalating threat. We emphasized visual storytelling through a 2.5D style, dynamic UI, and a dramatic shift in tone during the game’s twist ending, revealing that Death was simply an elderly owner trying to give the cats a bath. This project deepened my understanding of multiplayer systems, gameplay balancing, and how tone can be used to enhance player experience.

I took a deep dive into netcode development using Mirror Networking and Steamworks, building an online multiplayer game that supports up to eight players. The result was Huddle Raft, a cooperative, endless-runner-style sailing game where 2–8 players work together to navigate a small, circular raft through dangerous waters. Each player can only paddle in the direction they're facing, requiring constant coordination to avoid obstacles. Through this project, I gained hands-on experience with network synchronization, client-host architecture, and Steam lobby integration, all while learning how to design gameplay that naturally encourages communication and collaboration.

I made a medieval fantasy action simulator with satisfying, physics-based combat in a sandbox environment. Developed for a Combat Feel & HUD project, it showcases how adding "juice" can elevate the gaming experience. Subtle HUD elements and feedback provide players with essential information, seamlessly blending into the gameplay without becoming intrusive or distracting. This approach fosters an immersive and responsive experience that players will thoroughly enjoy. Ragdolls are also really fun to play with. 

I worked in a team of 4 designers to create a survival horror game, with a focus on enemy AI and visual feedback. I built a behavior tree system on top of a state machine to create enemies that could react intelligently and adapt to the player’s actions. This helped me deepen my understanding of scalable AI and real-time decision-making. On the visual side, I designed a color-coded feedback system: reds signal danger, blue highlights doors, and green marks collectibles. These specific colours were chosen to ensure clarity even when affected by chromatic aberration. This project helped me grow as a systems designer and improve my ability to communicate gameplay through visuals. 

I worked with another designer for this project and we dove deep into systems design. We were tasked to design a game with systems, features, and mechanics that supported each other well through data. Our game was architectured around spreadsheets, allowing us to tweak and balance parts of the game by changing data values. Adding more content to the game was as simple as adding new rows to the spreadsheet. Our game even supported data collection for analytics and an in-game bestiary for players to view the information and personal stats of each item and enemy in the game!

My first game project since joining DigiPen was an incredibly fun experience the whole way through, working together in a group of 5 with different artists and designers. The project spanned multiple milestones with catered playtesting sessions, and we even got featured on the DigiPen game gallery! Good communication and a clear direction greatly contributed to our success, allowing the team to stick to our vision of the game throughout the entire development process.

In my first group assignment, we were tasked to look into a common problem faced by young Singaporean adults and apply design thinking to solve it. We decided to tackle the issue of encouraging the development of healthy stress management habits in order to better cope with stress. We created a Tamagotchi Pomodoro app that gamified work sessions with a virtual pet companion, Pomo! In this project, we went through the iterative process of UX/UI design and user flow so that users could navigate through the app seamlessly. I also explored implementing shaders with color theory for user-adjusted color themes.

The next Brackeys game jam is here, so it's time to put my skills to the test. I took a shot at the horror game genre to create a LiDAR (light detection and ranging) game where players start out in a pitch-black world and shoot infrared beams to reveal more about their surroundings. This created a unique visual effect and a trippy experience where players had to navigate around what they scanned. The project ended up as one of my most successful games, placing 4th overall out of 1065 entries in the game jam, with various streamers and content creators playing the game, attracting new players seeking a quick thrill.

This project served as an experimental playground for me to gain proficiency in working with state machines. I took inspiration from Bloodborne's trick weapons and created a wave survival game with fully customizable characters. State machines allowed me to implement much more complex logic and gameplay mechanics that felt good in action games. By adding hit stun and splitting up a regular attack into three different states of windup, active, and recovery, I could work with attack frame data and provide a distinction between light and heavy attacks, with heavy attacks having a higher risk-reward factor of needing a longer windup but having more "punch" to it.

The festive season calls for another game jam, this time in a shorter period of 3 days and the theme of "I Am Everywhere". I created a simple Frogger-like game that could be played by 1 or 2 players locally. They could play co-op against a team of AI enemies, or play against each other. At this point, I was pretty confident in my abilities. As I had a shorter timeframe to get the game done, I worked in a smaller scope and put more time into polishing up a simple game loop. A general rule of thumb that I followed was to go for what I thought I could do within the given timeframe, and cut that in half. The results showed, and I managed to place 4th overall out of 79 submissions in the game jam!

Hungry for more, I began another project where I took inspiration from my favorite games from the Dark Souls series. I felt lost and overwhelmed without having a tutorial to follow, but eventually got the hang of the process of self-research and implementation. I ended up creating a top-down melee combat RPG where I dumped in all kinds of mechanics I could think of. Players could use multiple weapons with special abilities, enemies had their own set of abilities and attacks, and there were even minibosses and a final boss! Looking back, I'm still baffled at how much I was able to implement with no prior experience. The spaghetti code was god-awful but we don't need to talk about that.