Creative Leader & Game Designer

Game DesignLeadershipUI / UX

Delver’s Drop

Work Areas

, ,

For

Pixelscopic

Info

Website

Delver’s Drop is a 2D action RPGwhere players descend through an ever-shifting series of levels toward their final goal. As 1/3 of the full-time team devoted to the project, I worked on nearly every aspect in some capacity, including auxiliary work on the Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign and technology infrastructure. My main areas of contribution centered around designing the level generation system along with our lead engineer, creating room variants, generating class types and behaviors and managing the scripting/data of all game objects, characters, etc.

Of particular note is that the vast majority of game content – characters, enemies, weapons, items, etc. – had their data controlled via direct spreadsheet export. This allowed me to rapidly tweak values and test them, and also opened the way to easy future modding by the community.

I exhibited this project at PAX Prime 2012, PAX East 2013, and PAX Prime 2013.

BELOW: The in-game HUD I designed, accounting for major informational components and gameplay mechanics. Also an example overlay modal with general button styles and typography representation.

Delver’s Drop was the first project I worked on that was truly an independent effort with no publisher or done as contract co-development. I eventually oversaw a small team of content authors working to implement enemies and levels; planning and time management were extra critical in this instance as we worked toward hitting public deliverables.

ABOVE: Example spreadsheets I used to rapidly plan out content. Using some basic symbols as shorthand and a uniform cell size provided an easy and efficient way to design rooms before spending the time to create them in our level pipeline. I also used a number of sheets with varying columns of data to author mechanical impacts which were the imported into the game engine as CSVs.

ABOVE: Some screenshots or steps within the room creation pipeline I used to design dungeons for Delver’s Drop. Tiled was used to configure various objects, establish a tilemap, and set trigger volumes, etc. I also used Spine (not pictured) to setup player characters and enemies that used more complex animations and states.

Below are a sample of articles about Delver’s Drop after its initial announcement showing the generally positive reception and interest from various media outlets: