One of my passions is to design games. Games provide experiences through its unique interactive nature. It is also an artform for self-expression, just like all other artforms.
All games here are designed and developed by me, collaborators are specified and elaborated as well.
DFTR is a TTRPG that me and two other classmates (S and A) made for UChicago's one and only game design class: MADD 22322 (ooo palindrome). DFTR unfolds a fictional galaxy where intergalactical travel has been achieved and popularized. The galaxies are populated by different civilizations. One day, the civilizations received news that an alleged impending doom approaches, where entities called "The Reapers" will come in 3 millenia and annihilate every living beings. An intergalactic counsel, formed by civilizations, has been organized to prepare for The Reapers.
As a TTRPG, 3-4 players play as the founding civilizations in the counsel. They make their own flags/emblems, names, and species of their civilization. They are dealt with cards that represents events happening between them. Each card represents a certain amount of time between "now" to "3 millenia later," and it is up to the players to decide whether to cooperate and fight their last battle, or fight against each other till the end of the world.
We encourage the player to make a story out of this 3 million years. However, the "Reaper Card," representing the arrival of the Reapers, is hidden in the card stack in random order. Its arrival will be sudden, and the player won't be able to know when. We would like the players to first panic about this piece of information, then eventually come to accept it. There is a sense of peace in knowing the ending, but we want to encourage the player to still write their story, to show that ending is not everything to a story.
It is very clear from the name "The Reaper" that this game takes inspirations from the Mass Effect trilogy. Instead of a space opera-sque ending or story, I intended to only take the different species and the idea of a certain impending doom as the inspirations.
We all loved the song (Don't Fear) the Reaper, thanks to S introducing this song to me. The theme of the song also fitted the game very well.
Cyberspace is a work-in-progress FPS rogue-like which takes place in the Cyberspace (duh). The player has one and only one goal: to escape from the Cyberspace.
Notice that I have the entire idea and message before I watch the Matrix trilogy. It dawned on me how obvious the message of Cyberspace would seem to be after I watched the Matrix trilogy.
This is a short project that I did after the game design class, with a faculty as a mentor. Its predecessor was actually another idea: we live in a world where every company wants to collect data from us. Imagine a future where autonomous robots are a common thing. They don't have to be humanoid, but consider this as "sentient algorithm-based beings," like a smart speaker or smart thermostat. (like Detroid: Become Human, but also a little bit of Skynet). The player would be a smart speaker in a home, involuntarily listening to the residents' conversation. The gameplay would be listening to commands and try to serve the residents content that they demanded, but at the same time, you try to piece a life out of their conversation. You can either help them, or betray them. However, we ended up getting stuck up the technical details about implementing a proof-of-concept.
It then motivated me to eventually learn a game engine, and I chose Unreal Engine V. I decided to let my creativity free and just program whatever I want (with mentor's help of course). I ended up making an Unreal-Tournament-'99-CTF-type map, with a giant anatomically accurate human eye in the middle. The idea is to be deliberately and carefully obvious and literal in the design. I added some free-asset zombies and skeletons as the enemy placeholder. I was very happy with how it turned out, but the progress got stuck as life kind of picked up (is this even true?)
Project Cassandra (temporary name) is a work-in-progress first-person rogue-like that aims to create an experience of one fighting with their own negative emotions and experiences while being socially challenged.
Stay tuned.