Demo Reel
In Progress
An iconic AAA third-person action game
Co-dev
Release date: TBD
Technical Level Designer
Leading and representing my pod when communicating with our development partners.
Working closely with the leadership team to understand expectations, communicate those expectations to the rest of the team, and build actionable plans from there.
Bringing the blockout levels received from our dev partners into whitebox and further polish states.
Design and implement AI encounters in each level.
Design and implement scripted events.
Analyzing and breaking down levels into beats and goals and build plans to achieve them.
Working closely with the leadership team, artists, and narrative designers to rationalize the levels, and ensuring they achieve the desired gameplay beats, feel believable, and deliver the required narrative beats.
Acting as the vanguard when tackling any new technical challenges that arise from introducing new features to the game.
Shipped Games
Minecraft Legends
Co-op action strategy game
April 18, 2023
Technical designer
The go-to person on the team to tackle any technical challenges and questions.
Acted as a liaison between the design and engineering departments
Standalone tutorial (Designer)
This is the first feature I worked on in this game. I helped shape the design and fully implemented it.
Prologue act (Designer)
Helped design large portions of this act and I fully implemented it.
Piglin AI response (Feature Owner)
Spearheaded the process for updating the enemies’ AI throughout the game.
Horde of the Hunt (Feature Owner)
Designed and implemented the levels and the encounter scenarios.
Designed the boss encounters.
Minecraft Legends - Post Launch
DLC Team (Designer) - Shipped
Before leading the prologue strike team, I helped the DLC team in designing and implementing The Legend of the Llama DLC
Prologue Act Strike Team (Product Owner) - Shipped
Led a strike team of 12 devs from different disciplines responsible for overhauling the prologue act for the first major update of the game (shipped)
This rework provided better pacing, shorter act length, expanded tutorials, and better enemy tuning
Piglin Experience (Team Lead) - Shipped
Led a strike team of 6 designers responsible for improving every enemy encounter in the game as part of the second major update to the game (shipped).
Examples of my work
Horde of the Hunt - Raised base
This base has spots of raised terrain. Those create channels in between. Additionally the portal’s terrain height is lowered.
Design intentions:
Give the player different ways to engage with the base and encourage them to think about what to target first and how to reach it.
This horde’s unique trait is bolstering the most amount of units in its bases. As such, this base has channels to create pockets of engagement where the might of the enemy waves can be felt. This encourages the players to think on their toes to figure out how to deal with or avoid the enemy waves.
Horde of the Hunt - Crater base
This base’s terrain height decreases the closer we get to the portal.
Design intentions:
A base that can be approached from any direction.
Clearly show the waves of enemies and emphasize the unique trait of this horde. Because of the lack of obscuring terrain, the player will have a better understanding of the enemy compositions, locations, and difficulty. The enemies will also have an easier time reaching the player’s forces.
Boss Encounter - The Beast
The Horde of the Hunt’s boss has no base and attacks villages at night. The player will have to build defenses to defeat it.
Design intentions:
Create an “oh snap” moment when the player realizes this boss does not have a base where it waits for them and instead it dictates when and where the player can engage it.
Hit and run; the pace of the fights keeps fluctuating in that the boss will attack for a while, retreat, spawn enemies, and then attack again.
Reward players who prepare; it is expected that players will not be ready the first time they fight the boss and that they’ll be more prepared the next time they fight it. Players who invest in their defenses should be rewarded (whether they prepare traps or simply build a fortress of sheer brute force around the village)
Enemy AI
The enemies react to the player’s actions based on a heat map.
Design intentions:
The piglins cannot be perceived as smart. They’re reactionary and do not have proactive attack plans (for lore reasons!)
Clearly indicate the locations where enemy units will coalesce so the player can judge where to engage. This is done through Rally Points as seen in the image.
Clearly show which groups of piglins react to which player actions. This is done through Unit Compositions where, for example, some units will be assigned to defend structures while others will attack player structures. The player should be able to discern which units will react to their intended actions the more they fight the bases and study the enemy behavior.
The Legend of the Llama
One of the free DLC packs released for the game in June. The main character and the player units are replaced with super powered llamas. The goal is to defeat all 4 enemy bases.
I designed all the enemy bases in this DLC. The plan was to make each one offer a unique challenge while in keeping in line with the whimsical tone of this DLC pack.
Design intentions of the piglin bases:
Onboarding base: teach the player the new llama mechanics. This base only has a few structures and very few enemies.
Horde of the Bastion base: A mirror of the medium sized Horde of the Bastion base found in the main game with a lot more enemy units. This is meant to intimidate the player at first and then give them the satisfaction of destroying one of the harder bases in the main game using only llamas.
Horde of the Hunt base: A base filled with fast elite enemy units that have increased knockback. This base emphasizes “chase” gameplay where the player is encouraged to run away from the elites and focus on freeing the other llamas and destroying the base.
Horde of the Spore base: A base of terrain raised like a staircase as shown in the image. It is filled with long range units and towers that knock the player off the platforms. This is a base that provides navigational challenges for the players to overcome where they can predict the attack patterns of the knockback towers and move through the base accordingly.
Pre-industry highlighted projects
Click on any of the images to watch some gameplay :)
The Wish of the Strays
Made with: Unreal Engine 4 - C++
A Rogue-like part-sim part-SRPG game. The player is entered into a tournament where the winner gets to ask for a wish. Whatever the wish is, it will be granted.
Accursed
Made with: Unreal Engine 4 - C++
A wave-based rogue-lite action game where the player is granted the choice between three boosts that provide active and / or passive buffs.
Necromancer: Blood Call
Made with: Unreal Engine 4 - C++
In this action adventure game, you play as Leah Archfold, a blood necromancer in search of revenge and answers.
Tales From Rostra
Made with: Unity - C#
A turn-based RPG game with narrative-altering choices. You play as Fargas, Arcelus, Oberon, and Frea. A group of 4 military deserters who went looking for Fargas's sister after all connections with her got cut off.
About
Hey there, I’m Moe! I’m a game designer with strong technical skills. I started my career in 2016 as a computer engineer then started delving into game programming in 2018 and finally made the jump to game design in 2021.
As a professional game designer, I worked on all sorts of problems pertaining to the player experience including onboarding, player progression, combat, AI interaction, and others.
Due to my technical background, I tend to learn tools quickly and I always enjoy working with other designers and programmers to solve implementation challenges.
Additionally, I have owned several features of different scales and I have experience leading teams to achieve desired outcomes.
Before I joined the industry as a game designer, I created over 14 personal projects to teach myself the craft of game making. This included side scrollers, turn-based RPGs, strategy RPGs, and action adventure games.
Please use this form to send me an email or use any of the links below to contact me. Thank you :)