Mantle

One of the main features I owned was a desktop interface with dynamic text and news video playback. We used this interface to display all narrative sequences, from news videos and character conversions to the end-of-game credits. It also featured windows you could drag, close, and resize, scrolling news headlines, and a functional email inbox, all reading from a google sheet to JSON pipeline that made it quick and easy for narrative designers to add or edit any piece of text.

I built custom 2D minigames for each of the 6 enemies, working closely with designers and artists to capture each villain's personality through their gameplay. This ranged from themed reticles that would pop on screen and need to be quickly clicked away to descending projectiles players could ward off with Mantle's extendable wires.

A large part of this role was nailing the game feel and pacing for each enemy. The first fight needed to be easy enough to teach players the basics, while the final battle needed to feel like a true test of their skill. To achieve this, I built incremental levels of difficulty into each minigame type: for example, the clickable reticles would start large and stationary, then get smaller, then start moving, and finally require players to master a specific timing pattern to beat the final fight. With this strategy, I was able to build stakes into the gameplay itself, complementing the narrative and visual design of each fight!

As one of just 3 engineers, I had ownership of a large portion of the game, along with the added responsibility of communicating with almost every other team on the project: adding artwork, sound, and narrative into engine, understanding the goals of the design team and implementing their ideas, and meeting weekly with the director and lead producer to set timelines for the game.

I was especially effective in this role because my design skills complemented the purely technical skill of the other two engineers. While my Lead Engineer implemented backend systems and editor tools, I was able to consistently deliver corresponding frontend features that were polished and easy to use, helping translate between engineering and the art and design teams.