Tennessee Luc Jackson Phillips Ward

• Technical Game Designer• Project Manager• Hot Wheels World Race Fanatic

Hailing from California, I've moved to Sweden to continue my studies in game design.
I like being able to take my ideas and turn them into reality, so most of my focus has been on technical design.
That's not to say I don't love working with others, as I'm always interested to learn more about different disciplines, and will routinely take on roles that allow me to talk with everyone on the team.

Projects

Marked for Deletion (2024)
Meta Stealth Game

My Roles:
• Project Manager
• Technical Designer

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Murder on the Rocks (2024)
Bartending Murder Mystery Game

My Roles:
• Product Owner
• Lead Game Designer
• Additional Programming

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Down the Hill (2024)
Mobile Racing Game

My Roles:
• Lead Game Designer
• Level Generation Programmer

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Hunting the Aurora (2021)
Top Down Action Game

My Roles:
• Lead Game Designer
• Producer

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Marked for Deletion (2024)
Meta Stealth Game

My Contributions

• Designed and helped implement Investor AI behaviors.
• Designed and helped implement stealth gameplay loop using Unreal's Blueprints.
• Organized team structure and managed workflow.

Murder on the Rocks (2024)
Bartending Murder Mystery Game

My Contributions

• Lead team vision for project and maintained team alignment.
• Designed and helped implement drink making system.
• Assisted programmers via peer programming.
• Created and managed task assignments for all team members.

Process Summary

Team Vision

Going into this game project, I had only worked with a couple of the team members previously. I knew we could rely on the narrative and art abilities of the team, so I wanted to suggest ideas that could play on those strengths. One of the possible themes was ‘Put a Twist on It,’ so I thought of making a detective game where the suspects come to the detective rather than them having to search for them. This idea led me to a bar setting, where the patrons were all possibly involved in a murder mystery.Once we had decided on a game idea, we took some time to research and play through other games which focused on narrative and had drink making, or crafting components. Red Strings Club was one of the largest inspirations for the vibe and atmosphere of the environment. I also took notes from Coffee Talk and Tavern Talk for how to build the drink crafting system.

Drink Making System

We had initially tried to create a more ambitious crafting system, which focused on tactile elements and would require manipulation of objects in 3D space. The programmers and I did have early success creating a recipe system, which kept track of the ingredients added and checked them against a table of possible drinks, but the 3D manipulation had issues. The ingredients were tricky to manipulate into place, and didn’t always stay within the bounds of the bar. As a team, we ultimately felt we would not have enough time to both implement and iterate on the system. Instead, we shifted to a UI based approach, which allowed us to keep the underlying recipe system and main loop of actions for the player.

Key Takeaways

Some of my takeaways for the project are that, while the scope was not overly ambitious, it still should have been scaled down to allow for more time for iteration. We also should have more clearly defined the ownership of our pipelines, as not having this led to friction on multiple occasions. Lastly, we were lucky not to have many troubles with bottlenecks. One example of a bottleneck was that our narrative script and implementation was entirely done by one person, and the project could have been majorly disrupted if they became unavailable.

Down the Hill (2024)
Mobile Racing Game

My Contributions

• Lead design of the project within given constraints.
• Programmed and implemented level generation.
• Designed multiplayer code sharing based on generated levels.
• Assisted in level design by creating chunks of levels.

Design Constraints

Our major design constraints for this project were that it needed to be multiplayer, playable on mobile, and be related to action sports. Once our team had decided on making a soapbox game, I started to ideate on how we could implement the multiplayer component. Our team initially had the idea of making a rally-style component where one player would drive, and the other would make callouts based on a map of the level. I had a couple concerns with this method, first among which being that map player would have little to do in between making callouts. I also worried that the driver could likely learn the levels without the need for dedicated callouts.

Level Generator and Multiplayer

In order to alleviate some of these concerns, I started working on a method to procedurally generate levels out of premade chunks. I had hoped that by randomizing the maps, we could not only prevent drivers from memorizing maps, but also encourage more communication from the map player.During our greenlight session, we were told to rework our multiplayer format so the team started brainstorming. As I had been working to define how level generation would work, I suggested utilizing this mechanic more heavily by making it the core of the multiplayer format. Instead of having one player making callouts, we could have any number of players all playing on a randomly generated, but, importantly, seeded level. This way, all players could play independently of one another, while sharing their completion times for the same level.

Soap Box Design and Feel

After working on the level generation and multiplayer components, I switched over to work on the feel of the soapbox itself. One of our programmers made a robust system for simulating the center of mass for each model of the cars, and I tweaked the ratios of this system to make sure each car had a unique, but playable feel to them. We ended up breaking away from realism in the simulation in order to have a good baseline feel, then worked together to make sure no matter which combination of parts you applied to the car, you’d be able to drive it down to the finish line.

Hunting the Aurora (2021)
Norse Inspired Action Game

My Contributions

• Lead design of the project through by iterating on the core systems.
• Worked with programmers to develop combat systems and enemy designs.
• Designed and implemented the 3 levels using enemy spawn points and tile maps.
• Created and managed task assignments for all team members.

Prototyping

For the first couple months of working together, my team created several prototypes to test various ideas and mechanics. We weren’t exactly sure what we wanted to make yet, and explored various styles of gameplay. One of the prototypes that I made during this time focused on testing a 3D game environment as well as Unity’s baked in animation tools. At this point, my team was interested in including survival elements, so this prototype featured bars for hunger and thirst, as well as a simple enemy.

I added pickups for the player to collect that would restore the draining thirst and hunger bars and an attack to ward off the enemies. I was the sole developer on this prototype and the design was a collaborative effort. Ultimately, our team felt less comfortable with 3D development, and we confirmed among ourselves that we would develop a 2D game instead.

Game Pitch Meetings

As the game was our senior group project, the initial design concepts were collaborative. After prototyping, we had a more general sense of the kind of game we wanted to make - a 2D action game - a few of us started to put together more concrete proposals of games. We pitched these concepts to each other and then voted on which project to pursue for the remainder of the school year.My first concept for Hunting the Aurora focused on exploration and gathering resources by defeating enemies.

While my pitch included ideas for various other gameplay systems, the main focus was on the map structure and creatures that inhabited the map.

The elements of the regional creatures also factored into the overall progression. Weapons obtained from one region would be strong against one neighboring region's creatures, but weak against the other. This would incentivize the player to progress through the map in a circle, but would give them the freedom to choose a region to start in, and explore at their own pace.

My Role as Designer

After voting on the different pitches, our group decided to pursue my pitch idea, and I took on the role of Lead Designer. Because I was also the producer on this project, I wasn’t able to continue working on programming tasks like prototyping or scripting. As designer, I had a couple goals in mind for the player experience. First, I wanted the player to think about the enemies that they were fighting and engage with them in different ways. Another goal was to have the player build on their knowledge of the game and to steadily increase the complexity.The main way of having the player think about how to engage with the different enemies was their elemental types. The elements would act as a rock-paper-scissors type of system, so I wanted the player to think about which order to challenge each region. Additionally, I wanted each of the elements to have their own mechanical type of interaction with the player’s character. For example, fire enemies could cause damage over time and ice enemies could slow the player. The weapons obtained from a region would also be able to apply this interaction to enemies from the other regions. One of the ways I intended to increase complexity in this design was with the bosses.

One of the major obstacles our team faced was time constraints. We were ambitious with what we wanted to accomplish and this led to some major downsizing throughout the project’s lifecycle. While at first we thought three regions was achievable, our artists in particular had difficulty creating characters quickly, and some struggled with animation. Our team decided that we would have to continue with only one region, which meant changing major gameplay features. Rather than being able to obtain new weapons, we created a skill tree that the player could level up. I came up with most of the ideas for the unlockable perks on the skill tree, but my team also helped brainstorm, and the programmers specifically informed me on what they thought could be done quickly.

Without three regions, I felt that player engagement with the enemies would suffer. To combat this, I tried to focus instead on how the complexity of the encounters increased throughout the game. Instead of having an open map that the player could explore, I made three levels to traverse through. Our team was able to create four enemies and a boss, so later levels introduce new enemies and environmental hazards. Additionally, I wanted each of the enemies to interact with the player in a different way, and tried to have their behaviors reflect that goal.In the first region, the player mainly faces off against two enemies: one giant wielding a hammer and the other a sword and shield. These giants had the same body, so I wanted to make sure they behave differently, and had a different silhouette. Walking with his weapon across his frame, the hammer giant smashes his hammer into the ground, causing a shockwave that damages and knocks the player back. The sword giant holds both a sword and shield in front of himself, and strikes more quickly, burning the player if their sword lands a hit. In addition to having different attacks, the hammer giant also walks slower, and keeps more distance from the player when possible. The sword giant, conversely, moves in closer to the player, and circles them.

Toward the end of the first level the supporting ‘Imp’ enemy is introduced. The imp is the only ranged enemy in the game and is able to fire both red bolts at the player and fire green bolts towards other enemies to heal them. Because it is a ranged enemy and tries to support its allies, the imp will run away from the player. The last non-boss enemy is a lava eel. I wanted this enemy to act as more of a low health swarming enemy that would rush toward the player. In testing, this type of behavior didn’t feel very unique with how the player would interact with this enemy in comparison to the rest, so I also had the eel leave behind a damaging trail of lava. This change complemented the additional environmental hazards added to the second and third levels that created varied arenas to fight in.

True to the original game design document, the boss builds on the two giants’ attacks by wielding both a hammer and a sword. The boss has three total types of attacks he can perform; two of which are variations of the sword giant and hammer giant’s attacks. The sword creates a flaming slash that moves down toward the player, while the hammer creates a cone of fireballs. During the third attack, the boss slams both of his weapons together to create a ring of fire that emanates outward.

Key Takeaway

Hunting the Aurora was an interesting challenge to design. It is the largest game I have worked on, and I learned a lot about collaborating in larger groups. Though there were many changes from my initial designs for the game, I enjoyed puzzling out how to balance the time my team had with how much we could add to the game. Cutting two of the initial regions forced me to shift my design philosophies, and I think this has made me a more flexible designer.