Responsibilities

• Owned the vision of the game and maintained a detailed Game Design Document.

• Collaborated with stakeholders, producers, and team-members to publish a game on Steam.

• Communicated with and directed an offsite team to compose the music of Rhome.

• Designed and built the final level of the game and supporting tech.

Screenshots

Design Goals

In Depth (Chaotic Spaces): My primary responsibility here was defining what chaotic means in Rhome, and how it changes over the course of the game. One of the many things I learned from this process was that, with only 3 hours a day for the team to work, there isn’t time for everyone to read through an entire GDD. In collaborating with designers to create the chaotic and devolving spaces of Rhome I found it better to synthesize the GDD into more condensed formats. With chaotic spaces specifically, I:

• Created a comprehensive list of every possible tech / idea / aesthetic we had access to that would create a chaotic space with visual references and examples.

• Listed out at which stage of the game these ideas could be used.

• Requested a number of these ideas per level as well as defined how they should be spaced out.

I also was responsible for polishing the overall flow of movement through these spaces in the game. Specifically, if one designer pitches a level starting with many downward spirals, the previous should end with something different. Likewise, there was an overall symbolism of falling throughout the game culminating in an elevator crash. In the 2nd half of the final level, however, I emphasized upward movement to represent the protagonist’s climb after her fall.

In Depth (Surreal Puzzles): My responsibilities included pitching and fine-tuning the unique puzzle style of Rhome and collaborating with the designers to achieve this. With such vastly different puzzles, it was initially challenging to lock down what made a Rhome-style puzzle. What really helped this collaboration was the categorization of puzzle interfaces: Miniature model puzzles always had a miniature version of the real world component, and spinning puzzles always utilized a ceiling fan. These recognizable puzzle interfaces provided designers a clearer foundation to start from while allowing them the freedom to pitch surreal outcomes.

Initially, there was actually a 3rd puzzle interface: the elevator panel. This functioned similarly to a combination lock: players needed to find 3 numbers hidden within their environment and input them into an elevator panel on the wall to unlock the next door. In play-testing sessions, this wasn’t conveying as well to players and would’ve eaten away at too much of our development time to address. Ultimately, it wasn’t supporting Rhome’s puzzle style enough of unique influences over the environment and so it was my decision to cut this feature.

In Depth (Immersive Experience): My responsibilities included scheduling and iterating with the narrative team to create a narrative arc that was representative and supportive of the other layers of the game. Hailey’s voice lines needed to be immersive insights into her and the player’s intended emotional states and not jarring or misplaced. One of the more difficult things to tackle narrative-wise was how to build an emotional character that didn’t feel forced or as if they were putting words in the player’s mouths.

To achieve this, and to achieve a sense of consistency, it was my responsibility to listen to all 200+ takes and space the best ones throughout the game. Due to scheduling, we were only able to get these lines recorded as early as Beta and without an opportunity to re-record: so it was crucial that we implemented the lines quickly and iterated fast. Ultimately, some of the more complicated decisions I made in this process were about taking lines originally planned for one chapter and re-purposing them elsewhere upon hearing how they were sounding and how they were hitting players.

Finally, it was also my responsibility to adjust the locations of all 40+ narrative objects in game to make sure the insight they gave was reflective of the characters current emotional state.

Designing Level 5

Post Mortem

What went well:

• Creating a 5-level long, fully voice acted dark atmospheric exploration game with 7 original sound track compositions in only 16 weeks. While everyday certainly felt like we were moving fast, looking back I think this feat is a testament to the amount of good communication and planning we had to do across so many departments.

Challenges:

• Early on, finding the best way to communicate the game to the team was difficult. Initially, I had spent a lot of time outside of the core hours detailing every system within the game within the GDD in preparation for each day. Realistically, however, we only had 3 hours to work each day and the team was struggling with trying to keep up with the GDD and their work. What I found ultimately worked the best was being able to be more interactive with the team and communicating the ideas within the GDD verbally by designing alongside the team and providing feedback in scheduled end of day play-throughs.

What I learned:

• Communicate differently: I found that different members of the team prefer to communicate differently and, with only 3 hours a day to work, I think it’s incredibly important to understand what each person on the team needs in terms of understanding the game and its vision and how best to provide that to them.

• Iterate quickly: Getting things on screen as fast as possible is one of the best ways for the team to see what’s working and what’s not. While planning and discussion meetings are necessary for making any game, when things are able to get on screen it’s a lot easier to find the fun and chase it down through iteration.

What would I do differently?

• Scope the project down - While there were several cuts along the way: a third puzzle mechanic, a 6th level, a flashlight system, and a monster presence, I think the team and the game would have benefited from even more cuts. Specifically, I would have sought to reduce the introductory level length to help bring players more quickly into our capstone game and into the more interesting parts of the game.

• More puzzles - By the end of the project it often feels like we’ve finally just found the game and everything that makes it fun. If we had more time, I would have loved to dive deeper into the surreal and unique puzzles of Rhome in order to more meaningfully bring players into a mode of trying to understand and manipulate their chaotic environment.