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Creative Director, Game Designer, Level Designer, UI/UX Designer

George Brown Post Graduate / Level Up Project

Humour, Horror, Experimental, Alt Controller

Unity, GitHub

January to April 2025

My Role

Step into a realm of magic and mystery, where your emotions are the key to your survival. Master your power as the emotion mage to cast powerful spells, face formidable foes, and uncover the secrets that lie within the dungeon.

Moodcaster is an alternative controller game that allows the player to cast spells using their emotions. The experimental mechanics of spell casting via facial expression promise the players a memorable experience. It blends humour and horror together to let the player undergo a variety of emotions, have moments of chaos and fun. The emphasis on casual gameplay ensures that it appeals to a wide range of players while delivering depth through the emotion-based spellcasting systems.

Notable Features

Webcam facial recognition AI
Alternative controller
Emotion-Driven Spell Casting
Blend of 2D and 3D

Happy Sad Anger Disgust Fear Surprise

An extensive GDD that outlines the game design.

Mechanics
Systems
Level Design
Characters
Audio

Game Play

My Responsiblites

Defined the game’s vision, aesthetic, and overall feel to create an immersive player experience.
Wrote and maintained design documentation.
Designed and refined engaging gameplay loops, balancing player interactions through focused playtesting and feedback.
Developed levels that supported gameplay mechanics and narrative progression.
Focused on pacing, player guidance, and environmental storytelling to enhance flow.
Crafted visually appealing spaces that reinforced gameplay clarity and engagement.
Managed cross-team communication to maintain creative and technical alignment.
Fostered a collaborative, solution-oriented environment and resolved development challenges efficiently.
What I've Learned

Deepened understanding of level design iteration, improvement, and optimization.
Gained experience in player and enemy balancing to enhance game flow and fairness.
Refined player feel and interaction design, focusing on responsiveness and immersion.
Expanded knowledge of environmental storytelling to support narrative through space and design.
Strengthened collaboration, communication, and leadership across multidisciplinary teams.
Learned to identify and anticipate development challenges early in production.
Improved ability to lead within a structured hierarchy while maintaining creative flexibility.
Developed proficiency in design documentation, including GDDs and predictive breakdown structures.
Self Reflection

MoodCaster is a unique game that came with a variety of challenges I was genuinely excited to face. It was originally pitched as a much larger project, where players could walk through levels dedicated to different emotions and interact more deeply with the environment and NPCs. We eventually had to scale back due to time constraints and player exhaustion from constantly expressing emotions through facial tracking.
Through this project, I learned a lot about player feel and emotional design, specifically how to make players feel certain things at specific moments to create chaos, discovery, or unexpected blessings. This was also the first game where I led a large team, using my cross-disciplinary background as the foundation for my role as Creative Director and Game Designer. I felt deeply involved in every stage and gained a wealth of knowledge from my team and the specializations within each department. My favourite part of this game was using psychology and game feel to match what the spell did to each emotion. It was a unique challenge that led me to discover a new interest, which is using psychology in game feel.