Projects
Graduation project – Ambulance care
A simulation designed to show verbal and non-verbal communication of NPC’s
Serious Game – Noah’s Quest
A game designed to accompany Sova-training homework.
Card Game – Haunted Forest
4 Player Card Game
Vr game – Project Sõzo
A virtual reality experience
Global Game Jam 2017 – Distress!
Multiplayer Stealth Shooter
Practice – Unity Terrain
Creating levels in Unity
Blender adventures
Learning 3D modeling skills
Graduation Ambulance care
A VR application has been designed and developed with NPC’s that exhibit the ability to both act
inside of and react to their environment. interacting with the player utilising both verbal and
non-verbal communication and exhibiting emotions such as panic, frustration and friendliness.
This prototype was developed using rapid prototyping and the evaluation was conducted along
the way using rapid evaluation cycles, constantly using the findings to further improve the
prototype. For the purpose of rigorous evaluation two prototype states have been defined and
evaluated during the process.
Serious game
Noah’s Quest
Noah’s quest was a game prototype designed to help children with ASD (autism spectrum disorder) with homework assignments assigned by therapists.
Description
The game follows a boy called Noah as he goes through his primary school life. He gets into situations where he can bond with his new classmates and has to solve puzzles. The game is level based and each level also focuses on a single weeks worth of homework based on the Sova training protocol. Currently only the first exercise is in the game. We have however created content for three exercises. As our programmer became quite ill halfway through the project we decided to focus on adding polish such as voice acting instead of new features or chapters.
My role
I was a designer for this project and was mostly responsible for the
dialogue. The game had to be in Dutch and I was the only Dutch designer
in the team. This was quite challenging, because writing for children was something
i’ve never tried before.
Before deciding to study game design, I first earned a propadeuse in applied psychology. Because of that background I was also the person responsible
for contacting the target audience and testing our game. The
children were very sweet and the parents were very helpful too. It
was an amazing experience.
Card Game
Haunted Forest
Description
Haunted forest was the very first project I have worked on. I worked on it in a group of 6 people. It is a four player turn-based exploration card/board game with a lot of player interaction. I worked as a designer on this project and was mostly responsible for the creation of the rules and playtesting. The game was well received by playtesters from Indietopia and the Hanze because of it’s refreshing movement/maze system and the competitiveness the game invokes.
Design document
Premise
The card game is a four player turn-based exploration game with a lot of player interaction. The goal of the game is to create a path towards the middle card tile and pick up the ingredient that lies there. You then also have to bring it back to your own cauldron/spawn point to win the game.
Platform
The intended platform was the casual board game market. Due to the simplistic nature our game it has a low entry barrier, therefore it becomes extremely fun to play this with both family and friends. Despite the simplicity and low entry barrier, there is some appeal to a market that enjoys tactical and strategic games. This is mainly because of the tile flipping mechanism, the path forming and (smart) usage or saving of specific cards.
Response
The game generated a lot of positive responses both at school and at a local board game testing night at Indietopia the team was invited to. Because of this we are planning on fine tuning this prototype further and we would love to try and publish it.
Vr game
Project Sõzo
Description
Sõzo is an entertainment / relaxation game prototype which incorporates the HTC Vive virtual reality device. In the game players are a “god” who stands alone atop a planet. Players can create different kinds of creatures from a platform in space to populate the planet. The goal of the game is to create a diverse but balanced ecosystem, though at the stage it is now the game mostly focuses on interaction with the planet and experiencing your own creations by picking them up, seeing them interact and utterly destroying them with your god powers.
The different kinds of creatures can affect each other, for example, herbivores will attract carnivores that will attempt to eat them.
My role
This project was created with a total of 7 people, of which 2 others were designers like myself. The majority of the design was created as a team in the same room together.
I think my biggest contribution to the project was the way I handled team dynamics. The team was really motivated and especially our programmers were very skillful. This meant they could get a lot of prototyping done quickly, however the way they wanted to work was to keep adding new features quickly not keeping in mind the pace at which the artists could work. I spend a lot of time in this project keeping our programmers and artists on the same page and polishing user experience alongside the programmers as they were coding new stuff. We also organized public playtesting sessions.
I’m honestly amazed at how much vr games differ from conventional video games and how much polishing we needed to do before people from our playtesting sessions could actually play the game without our constant help. It really helped me gain an eye for what to look out for in future vr projects.
Global Game Jam 2017
Distress!
Distress! is a 2D 4 player shooter I created with some friends during a Game Jam. It is quick paced and super fun to play. Players are split in two teams and the goal is simply to destroy the other teams base.
Invisibility pulse
The main feature of the game is that all players are mostly invisible on the screen unless they are shooting. A reactor in the middle shoots pulses which temporarily makes you visible. A very small outline is still visible on the character, the idea behind it being that you can still see your own character this way if you focus.
Level design
My main focus during development was level design. I had never made a 2D enviroment before, so it was quite the learning curve for me. The Idea behind the level was to create a lot of different ways to quickly get across the map and create constant action. The map was made with a few mechanics in mind, such as jumping, zones safe from the pulse and elevator platforms. Due to some issues with the programming we didn’t get these features implemented.
Audio commentary
The game possesses a wide variety of audio commentary usually related to getting kills or dying. These were recorded with people from the whole gamejam and are a blast to listen to while playing the game.
PENTAKILL!
Xbox controls
Due to time restraints we weren’t able to add keyboard imputs to the game, so xbox 360 controllers are required to play. It’s however great fun and super easy to play with 4 players on a screen.
Blender adventures
Creating art in blender has proven itself to be a fun stepping stone to fulfilling my dream of becoming a great designer. While I am not an artist, I have become passionate about learning tools that help me create rapid prototypes to increase the fidelity of my designs.
Internship “ByYourSite”
During my internship at ByYourSite I worked mostly as a 3D modeller on a game for the Microsoft Hololens. Unfortunately I am not at liberty to show or discuss the game. However my work consisted of building 3D models in Blender (Or create scenes, such as the example i made above, unrelated to the game), exporting them to unity and then creating prefabs for our programmer to work with. As unrelated tasks I helped prototype levels for the game and itterated on gameplay loops. I was also appointed Scrum Master for the project.
Second life
In my free time I often help my aunt with her business selling assets in the game Second Life. Most of my contribution consists of editing existing 3D models she provides me and optimizing them for use within the engine or editing them to her tastes. Above is an example of some 3D walls I created from scratch. The textures were provided by my aunt however.
Current knowledge
While I have not had a whole lot of experience creating 3D models from scratch, my work for ByYourSite as well as my aunt has given me a lot of experience with Blender as a tool. I have also learned effective workflows for exporting Models to engines such as Unity or the Second Life Viewer. I have some experience with many of the non-modeling features of blender too. Such as rendering or rigging and animating. An example of the latter is the dog I created from scratch above.
Not exactly sure how the ball could have rolled in without those pins falling, but hey I made a bowling ball and pins!
I thought it would be fun to start working on a chess set.
Bonus Blender adventures
While most of my work on 3D modeling has been done during my internship and by working for my aunt I also do enjoy creating some models in my own capacity. Here are some fun examples.
I was playing around with creating Jewelry. I like the old school look of this one. As if it comes straight from a game like Runescape.
About me
I am a video game developer focussed on all aspects of game design and project management. I am 27 years old and have a passion for good design, critical thinking and uninhibited creativity. All of which I strive to combine in my work. During most of my projects I’ve served as scrum master since I enjoy challenging problems as well as the dynamics of teamwork.
In most projects I’ve worked on Mechanics and level design. I have experience working in the Unity engine and can do 3D modeling in Blender as well as code (a little bit) in c# so I can quickly create prototypes.
