Frackin Universe
2019 - Present
A massive mod project with over 500,000 subscribed players through Steam.
I acted as Game Designer, Level Designer, Artist, Project Manager and Programmer on this project, and wearing any other hats I need to to accomplish goals.
- • Responsible for mechanics, systems, level, narrative and visual design.
- • More than 500,000 players on Steam.
- • Completely reworked the entire game progression and balance from the ground up.
Project Experience
- • Responsible for all core game design elements (mechanics, features, etc).
- • Worked iteratively with programmers, artists and the community to test and iterate new gameplay mechanics.
- • Enhanced original gameplay mechanics of Starbound with expansive new features to bring players further agency in gameplay.
- • Planned and implemented a complex Research system to drive progression through gameplay choices and exploration.
- • Created and implemented hundreds of Levels and Microdungeons using Tiled.
- • Added new species and custom racial ability and hunger system with support for third-party races.
- • UX/UI design for updated menus, new UI elements and added QoL assets.
- • Rebalanced combat and expanded it with new mechanics and systems (Parry, Ammo, Masteries)
- • Added hundreds of new weapons and tested and iterated on their balance for Player verses Environment combat.
- • Added a new quest hub with hundreds of quests, and tied it to core game loops.
- • Added over 70+ new biomes to the game.
- • Created hundreds of new assets including animated sprite sheets, sprites, parallax images, tiles and more.
- • Wrote hundreds of pages of new lore and narration, including NPC speech and storyline beats.
- • Planned and implemented puzzle-based gameplay features (light-based puzzles, liquid puzzles, platforming, etc)
- • Created pixelart for thousands of assets.
Design for Frackin Universe
My most ambitious gaming related personal project, Frackin' Universe started as a mod for Starbound with a single new plant. It soon grew to become a whole new way to play the game and contains tens of thousands of new items and miscellaneous content.
There are far too many features to list, and after 8 years of development it is by far the largest mod for the game and potentially the largest anywhere. With over 500,000 players, it has a little something for everyone. It's been reviewed in established gaming sites such as Kotaku, Twinfinite, Rock, Paper, Shotgun, heaps of videos on YouTube and and the games' developers.
Work Samples
