Platform: PC	Duration: 6 months	Team size: 1
Tools used: IntelliJ, LibgGDX (Java game development framework)
Role: Game Designer, Game Programmer

Overview

Single player, 2D isometric experimental game prototype, that tests a verb-noun-element based spell casting mechanic (Ars Magica, Magicka inspired) in a procedurally generated three layered world.

Core game mechanics

Procedurally generated three-layered world

The prototype generates a procedurally generated world with 3 layers: surface layer, underground layer full of caves and passages and an underwater layer with the same kind of feature.

It also divides the world in cities and islands and procedurally names them, using different types of names for northern, eastern, western and southern regions.

Spell-casting mechanic

The initial idea for the spell-casting mechanic was partially inspired by Ars Magica's (Creo-Intellego-Muto-Perdo-Rego) mechanic and fictional magic grimoires (such as Lovecraft's Necronomicon) spell casting syntax, trying to adapt to the more restricted virtual interaction world without giving away much of the flexibility that physical world spell casting phrasing has.

The spell-casting mechanic tries to embrace all possible spell outcomes: creating creatures from scratch, reanimating objects or corpses, casting fire/storm attacks, etc.

In order to achieve this, the experimental prototype makes use of a series of elements that can be used both as verbs and nouns. These elements were very carefully chosen in order to be intuitive and able to embrace as much outcomes as possible. Elements are also intented to be used as complementary attributes to be specified in the spell.

For example: "Creo" + "Corpus" + "Astutia" will create a certain type of creature that has intelligence, while "Creo" + "Corpus" will create a creature with a very basic IQ.

AI mechanic

The AI of the different creatures that can be created is used as a game mechanic as well, because each of them has a pre-programmed behaviour that reacts to the player's input (that acts as some kind of omnipotent god).

Platform: PC	Duration: 4 months	Team size: 1
Tools used: Excel, NanDeck (http://www.nand.it/nandeck/), Paper prototyping
Role: Game Designer

Overview

Ragnarök (provisional name) is a commissioned 2-player card battle game with customizable decks where the players take the role of a viking king and have to defeat the enemy. There is a future intention to expand the game and design a tournament version of the game made of two phases.

Core game mechanics

Due to a non-disclosure agreement I cannot display information about the game. I can say, though, that the game main core mechanic involves combining (connecting) cards through slots. The game becomes complex through a very simple mechanic.

Card Design & Balancing

More than 250 cards, of different types, were designed, emerging from the core game mechanics of the game.

The game was modelled in a (pretty huge!) Excel spreadsheet, and using a system of costs vs. benefits for each of the cards, the balancing was performed. This part of the process took quite a few iterations (involving paper prototyping and playtesting as well).

Paper prototyping and playtesting

Platform: Windows, Mac and Linux	Duration: 48 hours	Team size: 1
Tools used: Unity3D, Aseprite, Adobe Photoshop
Role: Game Designer, Game Developer, Game Artist

Overview

"Agent Patissier" is a single player, top-down, third-person 2D game, developed for the 48-hour "Ludum Dare #41" game jam, under the theme "Choose 2 incompatible genres". I chose Stealth and Cooking Sims

Synopsis

You are a Patissier (dessert chef) who needs to recover the stolen pages from your grandma’s epic and secret recipes book.

They are all in Bonbon Fortress, a big labyrinthine building full of kitchens and people crazy about chocolate and desserts.

• Stealth your way into the rooms and recover the 9 stolen pages.

• Pick-up ingredients and use them to cook delicious desserts. Combine the 8 basic ingredients and discover new creations.

• Bait the patrols with your mouth-watering creations and use the opportunity to get deeper into the building.

• Four different types of enemies with varying behaviours and tastes.

Outcome of the Competition

The entries for this event are evaluated in 8 different categories, each one of them having its own ranking. These are the results for the entry:

#135 Overall 3.758

#133 Theme 4

#178 Fun 3.582

#88 Humor 3.585

Collecting ingredients and crafting recipes

The game revolves around stealthily gathering all 9 secret recipes of your beloved grandma that are somehow scattered and guarded in the Bonbon Fortress.

A high-level game loop might be:

1. Collect 8 types of ingredients without getting discovered

2. Craft recipes with your ingredients

3. Lure enemies with recipes

(Which in turn, allows the player to be even more stealthy, collect even more ingredients and get deeper into the fortress.)

About enemies

There's 4 different types of enemies. Each enemy craves a specific type of dessert. For instance, Cookie Monster featured below craves cookies, and cookies only, while there's another enemy that only likes chocolate desserts.

The four types of enemies also have different behaviours. Cookie Monster has a really long eyesight, but this gets reduced after eating cookies, awarding the player with a little advantage.

Download links

Ludum Dare Entry Webpage

Itch.io Downloads Page

Platform: Windows, Mac and Linux	Duration: 48 hours	Team size: 1
Tools used: Unity3D, 3DS Max, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop
Role: Game Designer, Game Developer, Game Artist

Overview

"This Dungeon is Alive" is a single player, first-person 3D game, developed for the 48-hour "Ludum Dare #35" game jam, under the theme "Shapeshifting"

Synopsis

Welcome to this Creepy Dungeon!

You are an occultist in a quest to get the coveted Necronomicon from the heart of a labyrinthine dungeon... a dungeon that is alive. The corridors breathe, the rooms move... the dungeon shapeshifts while you explore its most deep secrets.

Find the Necronomicon in this constantly shapeshifting dungeon and find the exit before something catches you, taking you to your certain death.

Outcome of the Competition

The entries for this event are evaluated in 8 different categories, each one of them having its own ranking. These are the results for the entry:

#20 Mood 4.07

#75 Graphics 4.04

#104 Audio 3.58

#147 Overall 3.67

#151 Innovation 3.69

#155 Theme 3.84

#265 Fun 3.41

#290 Humor 2.71

Download links

Ludum Dare Entry Webpage

Windows Download

Linux Download

OS/X Download

Source Code

Platform: Mac, Windows, Linux	Duration: 7-8 weeks	Team size: 1
Tools used: Unity3D, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere Pro
Role: Game Designer, Game Developer, Game Artist, Animator/Video Designer

Overview

3D serious game aimed at covering a really hard topic such as the research being performed in the Glioma & Stem Cell Research Group about glioblastoma in such a way that it can be understood by the general public.

Oficial Game Website (includes download page)

Main Purpose

The main purpose of this game is to get under the skin of one of the researchers in the Glioma & Stem Cell Research Group, Anna, which will take us on a journey through the different tasks and experiments she performs on the lab.

The player is able to move around the laboratory, while at the same time follows Anna's commands to complete experiments and attend short explanations that are embedded within the environment.

The laboratory

The 3D laboratory is a simplified 3D model of the real laboratory where the actual research takes place. During the design phase of the assets, Anna (researcher and point of contact) provided me with sets of photographs of the areas where she worked.

A simplified version of the laboratory was designed to suit the scientific script that we envisioned.

Content exposition

Content is delivered via several approaches: 3D models scattered throughout the laboratory, short video explanations that show, with the aid of animations and audio, the theory behind the experiments, and guided audio instructions where the user gets to interact with the environment.

Platform: WebGL, Android	Duration: 7-8 weeks	Team size: 1
Tools used: Unity3D, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop
Role: Game Designer, Game Developer, Game Artist, Sound Designer

Overview

Award winning single player, 2D visual novel (dating simulator style), conceived to increase awareness about teen dating violence, and help teens, tweens and young adults to identify and avoid abusive relationships.

Main Purpose

The main purpose of this game is to get under the skin of as many players as possible, allowing boy-girl, girl-girl and boy-boy relationships, where the player can assume any gender. In order to achieve this, the game portrays subtle unhealthy treats in relationships that players can relate to, without getting to obvious (usually physically) violent behaviours.

Consequently, players will be able to swift their perception about concepts such as "love" or "romanticism" towards healthier mindsets, hopefully helping them to avoid introducing unhealthy attitudes in their future romantic relationships.

Initial trailer

Note that this trailer portrays an early version of the game. An updated trailer will be available soon.

Dialogue Engine

The game required implementation of a dialogue engine that reacted to the player's choices, showing the appropiate branches of the story.

In order to do so, a dialogue engine had to be developed. The engine parses the story containing the story tree and updates the view accordingly.

The story tree file (JSON) is divided into a series of "Story Nodes", which in turn can contain a list of "Dialogue Nodes". Every "node" contains either a field that specifies the next node to be played or a list of options that trigger different "nodes".

Each node specifies the place we are at, the characters that should appear, and their moods, the texts, the options, and the effects that may be triggered (such as "fade" or "wiggle").

The engine also parses the texts, which have to be written following a specific syntax.

With this special syntax, we are able to specify the character that is speaking, his/her mood, and we use some special characters to specify new lines, and words that depend on the player's / crush's gender.

Screenshots

Story design. Tree.

UI design

Art

Platform: PC	Duration: < 3 months	Team size: 2
Tools used: Flash (Actionscript), Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop
Role: Producer, Game Designer, Game Developer, Artist

Overview

Single player 2D simulation - strategy game, conceived to raise awareness among youth about HIV and AIDS.

LHIVE (VIHDA, in spanish) is a simulation 2D strategy game developed for the ONG Proide conceived to educate young people on AIDS and HIV. In LHIVE the player starts with a 5 billion budget and has to use it strategically to avoid that the HIV spreads while he subsidizes investigation to find a vaccine. Each country starts from the actual situation of the virus at that certain country and evolves based on real statistics. This initial situation is specified by an external XML file that the game loads at the beginning.

The actions that the player does on each country have consecuences on the velocity of the spread of the virus and AIDS.

The player has to save the humanity before the virus exterminates the whole population.

Core game mechanics

Resources management

The player takes the role of some kind of omnipresent ruler of the Earth that is provided with some budget in order to exterminate the virus and find the cure. The resources are equivalent to action points, and spent in different decisions that affect the evolution of the virus.

Decision making

One of the biggest aims of the game is to raise awareness of the virus and the disease, and as such decision making is a core game mechanic whose use intends to educate.

Duration: < 1 year	Team size: 5
Tools used: Teensy 3.0, Teensyduino, Hardware building
Role: Interaction Designer, Hardware Designer & Builder

Abstract

This research focuses on the design, validation and development of a new interaction model, from now on known as MiwMiw, whose main goal is to improve the dialogue with everyday objects, enduing them with new functionalities in a close, tangible and natural way.

Platform: PC	Duration: < 1 year	Team size: 5
Tools used: Unity, 3Ds Max, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop
Role: Game Designer, Level Designer, Tech Artist

Overview

Bittrip is a single player, third-person platform adventure in 2.5D (3D with a 2D view) where a single bit called Bit (what a surprise!) has to travel through optical fiber, servers and wifi and deal with evil viruses to deliver safely 1 bit of information.

Bit can exist in two different modes - 1 and 0 - and each one of them activates or deactivates Bit's abilities and its environment. In the game we treat them like two different characters that the player switches: One and Zero.

Core game mechanics

Bit's bipolarity

Bit can exist in two different states. The player can always choose whether to exist in mode 0 or 1.

Mode 0 is the natural mode. Zero can move, jump and shoot enemies.

Mode 1 is the special mode. One can see blocks that Zero can't, and when in this mode, some environment features get activated (such as ceiling magnets, secret gates or superspeed). On the other hand, the shooting ability stays deactivated.

The levels were designed so that the player has to stay alert, think quicky, react and switch cleverly between both modes in order to overcome obstacles. In some situations certain combos are needed such as One -> Jump -> Zero -> Shoot -> One -> Jump.

Energy management

Zero is able to shoot tiny misiles using energy. The player has to carefully manage that energy in order to be able to have munition for all the enemy encounters.

In order to recover energy, levels have repeaters. On the other hand, Bit will have to avoid substractors that will remove energy from him.

Level Design

Levels were designed using the spectrum of environmental elements that emerged from the core mechanics such as breakable walls, through-walls, ceiling magnets, superspeed zones and Wi-Fi areas with floatability, among others.

Platform: PC (Facebook games), Mobile, Tablet	Duration: 6 months	Team Size (Game design part): 2
Tools used: Microsoft Excel, IntelliJ
Role: Mathematical Game Designer

Overview

As part of my job during the 6 months I worked at Akamon Entertainment Millenium I was enrolled in several social slot games and videobingos with different special features and themes. For all of them, I had to model the game, properly balance it, build a simulation and playtest it.

The games are all published in the Viva! Bingo & Slots app, available in Facebook.

The Games

For each of the games I provide a significant screenshot. All games can be accessed at the following link: Viva! Slots & Videobingo on Facebook

Gem Safari

Golden Kitties

Wild Blooms

Yum Yum Bingo

Dragon Eggs

Golden Bonanza

Amazon Legends

Temple of Fortune

Pearl Reef

Space Guardians

Zodiac Empire