Operation Blind Ghost is a 3D top-down stealth game with invisibility set in a fantasy world in a war torn environment. With the power to become invisible, you sneak through the level, collect knowledge and secret documents and try to escape unnoticed.


What I learned

  • The priorities and duties of a Lead Game Designer
  • The creation of a non-linar, yet guided 3D Level from scratch
  • When it is best to decide what work to do and when to involve the team in it
  • That everything is useless if it is not easily understood by the target group


My Responsibilities

Lead Game Design:
  • System Design
  • Feature Design
  • Level Design
  • Balancing
  • Documentation (GDD, DGDD, High Concept, LDD, etc)
also:
  • VFX Art
  • Sound Design


Game Design Examples

To help the team understand the core mechanics of a stealth game I designed a paper prototype which we could test and tweak on the fly.

Choose your own Adventure Paper Prototype
This system was designed to take care of enemy states and behaviours which is crucial to every stealth and detection system. I made a chart to help the engineer design the final system and to communicate public variables.

Alert System Design

Level Design Examples

These are some early block outs for puzzle sections of the map. I made a quick port of my paper prototype and tested them in game.

Puzzle Blockout Tests
Later in development I tried to take care of player guidance in different areas on the map and defined zones of activity and rest.

Player Guidance
This is the top view of the final level that you can see in the released game. It's more scattered and has roads to the different sections of the map.

Final Level

Documentation

For my second project I stepped up my documention to 200%. Not only, did I write various more documents, but also tried to visualize more. That means more charts, graphics, images and more lists and bullet points. To reduce the amount of plain text and make the documents easier and more enoyable to read.