The Challenge

On the FPS prototype, the hard part was never a shortage of ideas. It was translating those ideas into actual gameplay and making them work coherently into a balanced experience. As the person owning documentation, concept, and worldbuilding, my job was to communicate a fresh vision clearly enough that engineering and modeling could build it.

Building the Prototype

I established everything from the ground up: the look of the main characters, the experience players would move through, and the mechanics: how each system functioned and how it held together logically within our engineering limitations. A lot of the work was turning those limitations into opportunities, finding ways to make a constraint read as an iconic advantage instead of a compromise.

Hands-On in Unreal

I handled the prototype end to end in Unreal: level-design blockouts, destructible-asset integration, and post-processing and visual treatment. I also worked with the sound design team to develop our gun sound design and other small elements.

Leading a Small Team

In a fast-paced indie environment, I worked shoulder to shoulder with the team. With engineering, I helped build the blueprints and interactable assets players would encounter on their journey. With the modeling team, I worked closely on weapon and asset design, making sure each concept communicated its idea in enough detail that they had the easiest possible path to modeling it. I held the vision together through clear documentation of design and function and weekly stakeholder meetings on technical and visual progress.

The Forever Winter

Here I created concept art, 3D assets, and decals, and provided feedback on the level elements that visually guide a player’s decisions. That meant testing ideas in the build, painting over screenshots, and annotating them so the intent was unmistakable. These were concepts and feedback for the team to implement, not final decisions I locked.

Outcome

As leads, we made the collective decision to focus on launching The Forever Winter, which landed with strong audience anticipation and a high-viewership trailer reveal on IGN.