HYPERFIST is my current game project for my game design degree. I serve as the design lead and the combat designer for my team of 21 programmers, designers, artists, and audio designers.

The game is being developed in Unreal Engine 5.4.4 and has been in development since April of 2024.

As the combat designer, I design, balance, and polish the player movement and attacks, the 6 enemies, and the final boss. I work closely with our programmers, artists, and audio designers to create a fast, deep, and stylish combat experience. I also design and balance the rank and style systems that incentivize the player to punch with deliberation and on-the-fly thinking.

I am responsible for all combat design in the game. This includes all character combatants, the player movement, and supporting systems. Additionally, I designed the scenario and world the game takes place in, as well as wrote the script for the game. In the recording studio, I both directed our voice actor and did voice work myself.

PLAYER ATTACKS

The attacks that the player can perform are all designed as both combat tools and movement abilities, allowing for the player to flow between combat and traversal fluidly. Enemy encounters are designed with verticality and movement in mind, requiring the player to bounce from enemy to enemy with their multitude of movement options in combat. Balancing the attacks for use in both combat and traversal without making them too strong in one department and not the other was a challenge.

PLAYER MOVEMENT

The player's gravity, friction, and air mobility are all designed to allow for extended periods of time to be spent in the air. The optimal positioning for combat is generally to be above the enemies, so it was all designed to be non-restrictive for the player experience.  The philosophy is that the player should always be able to execute a plan in movement and in combat.

ENEMY ATTACKS

Enemy attacks are designed to be countered by specific player interactions. I designed an outline for the attacks of each enemy and worked with animators and programmers to create and refine them. I made sure that all feedback was clear and concise for any enemy interaction.

ENEMY BEHAVIOR

The enemies in the game all work in a combat manager, and enemies that interact with it have differing behavior for when they are attacking the player and waiting in the manager queue to attack. I worked with our enemy AI programmer to create the behavior to keep waiting enemies continue to engage with the combat flow the player creates, by keeping them close to the front of player, allowing for them to swap in and out of the queue while still being in reach of the player.

SUPPORTING SYSTEMS

The game has multiple supporting systems for its combat. The style system is a way of classifying how well and how stylishly the player engages with combat, rewarding the player more for executing special attacks and getting bonuses. The bonus system incentivizes the player to use specific enemy interactions more, such as throwing the bomb enemy at other enemies. The higher the player's style rank is, the more damage they deal to enemies.

SCRIPT WRITING & VOICE DIRECTION

Some of the game's characters have voice lines play during gameplay and cutscenes, and I was responsible for writing the game's whole script and directing the voice recording sessions. I worked closely with our voice actor and audio designers to make sure everyone could provide the necessary assets and implementation.

WORKING ON A LARGE TEAM

The team has grown over the course of the project, but it has always been a large team. It is currently at 21 members, and it started at 14 members. It is the largest team I've ever worked on, and it has come with its challenges. Working with so many other people makes it difficult to stay caught up on what everyone has been working on, and can lead to diverging visions of the game. I made a point to try to stay caught up on everyone's work, and also encourage my team to play the game as much as possible. I've also learned a lot about time management, especially in the context of meeting time.

LEADING A DEPARTMENT

I lead the team of designers on the project, a team of 3. Everyone on the design team has their own role, in combat, level, and experience, but meeting and leading the workflow and direction of the other aspects of the game was a challenge. I've never struggled much with my own workflow when designing one part of a game, but directing others has made me learn a lot about team management and working in/with other design disciplines.

UNREAL ENGINE 5 WORKFLOW

At the beginning of this project, I had almost no experience with Unreal Engine. Working on HYPERFIST has taught me a lot about working in it. Most of my work on this project has been in blueprint scripting, which I have become relatively skilled at. Enemy behavior and the style bonus system are my main contributions to the game's codebase. I have also done some work in level design, mostly editing and decorating the levels created by our level designers.

BALANCE FOR ACTION GAMES

This game was my first project where I really had to think about balancing multiple enemies and character actions. Running playtests and feedback from others on the team helps, but balancing it all has been a challenge. I often had an issue where I would get feedback from a playtest, then overcorrect the issue, then have the same problem of overcorrecting in the opposite direction. It's been tricky to get the game just right, but I've definitely learned a lot from this experience.