I'm Ryan.
I'm a video game designer.
I'm a designer living in Melbourne, Australia. I've been playing games of all genres for my entire life.
I started studying game design at the Academy of Interactive Entertainment (AIE) in 2023, specialising in creative writing, gameplay, and level design.
Level Design Assessment, AIE
de_ChurchTest,
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
As part of my studies for my Advanced Diploma, we were to submit an assessment on Level Design and its principles. As a part of that, I decided a flex of my Counter-Strike Global Offensive knowledge would be the best way to express my competency. This is a screenshot of the level in question, once I'd actually learned how to make it in Hammer - "Church Test". Unfortunately, one month later, Global Offensive was overwritten with CS2, which has rendered this map no longer playable.
The sketch I drew in class remains, however. Analysing site locations, sight lines, spacing and cover, potential grenade hotspots... Grenades are the big thing, especially in a professional match, which meant the entire map had to be scaled larger, and I was considering putting in higher walls and other objects to catch grenades from being thrown too far and too precisely (but decided against it, as I would simply balance them on a case-by-case basis to reward player knowledge). I ran simulations with bot players, and had a couple friends give feedback on balancing, and found that it's actually pretty balanced between the teams, at least at a casual level. I learned a lot and had heaps of fun, it's just a shame not many got to play it.
End of Year 1 Final Assessment, AIE
Tank-Tank Toybox,
Unreal Engine 5
For the final assessment for the first year of my diploma, I (along with another designer), was charged with designing a project for an arcade experience, simulating a real team in a real workplace. To meet our brief, which was to create an "arcade experience". To achieve this, we created Tank Tank Toybox, a four-play PvP arcade experience.We worked together documenting ideas, processes, and task delegation to our three artists. I was mainly focused on ensuring the gameplay emphasised the arcade aspect through the mechanics, controls, and level design. This meant having to tailor gameplay to a casual crowd and ensuring that it was immediately fun to play, but also deep enough to keep people playing after the initial fun factor subsided. This meant simple controls and concept, but with some advanced mechanics such as bullet ricochet to really encourage and reward good movement and skill.
Year 2 Assessment for UX Design, AIE
Mecha-Nation,
Design Concept
An assessment for my Advanced Diploma was for designing the user experience. To do this, we were given the goal of designing a mobile app, and understanding how potential users would interact with and navigate it. To do this, we had to identify who our users were going to be, and what their goals were. We did this by creating a Persona, listing user goals that fit that persona, and writing user stories. Some are as follows;
“I want to change my mech’s components”
“I want to find some opponents to fight”
“I want to go to the shop to buy new components”
“I want to see my match history”
“I want to see my leaderboard position”
To the right are the images I created in Paint to show how navigation would be done on a mobile screen, which we presented to the rest of class using Google Slides.
End of Year 2 Final Assessment, AIE
Steel Seraph
Unity Engine (Ongoing)
Art by Aden Buglar, team artist
Steel Seraph is the "End of Year" project at the end of the Advanced Diploma that I, as part of a team, designed for. It's a first-person action shooter with a heavy emphasis on movement. I was involved with most design aspects from the beginning, including documentation, organisation, team management, timelines, as well as gameplay and level design. Writing and narrative was done by me in the early stages, but it isn't reflected in the final product.
Some screenshots of level design are seen here, where a big emphasis is placed on guiding the player through routes of movement that are fun, but also limiting them and making sure they're paying attention to what they're doing, lest they get stuck. A big issue with gameplay without good level design that came up during testing was the tendency for the player's best strategy to be backing up and "kiting" enemies. Having the environment be varied, but balanced in terms of restriction, was extremely important for discouraging this behaviour and playing as intended, a more fun experience. Instead of running backwards in a straight line and not looking at or engaging with the level design, players are much more incentivised to look forward, traverse the environment, circle around, find vantage points and paths. Kiting is still possible and sometimes beneficial, but supports the other mechanics rather than excluding them.
Future Plans
In 2025, I move onto the GDML with AIE, or the Games Business - Graduate Diploma. To support my previous diplomas, I will be consolidating that practical knowledge in making games with business education. This will involve contract writing, market research and analysis, and applying for and negotiating funding for projects.
What it will also do is give me the opportunity to properly lead and direct a project of my own, start to finish, with no authority or limits on my creativity. I really think I'm capable of leading a team in making a fantastic experience and am very eager to test myself and my capabilities.
In the meantime, I'll give a teaser.
So watch this space. My best work hasn't been done yet.
I'm currently looking for team members to collaborate with on a project in Unreal Engine 5, so please feel free to get in contact with me through the LinkedIn button below.