Valerie Chen
Game Designer | Developer | Artist
E-Ntertainer
E-Ntertainer is a 2D action platformer about a stuffed bunny following its owner, a young girl, into an alternate universe. The player traverses through 2 environments, mimicking the girl's childhood, as they avoid hazards and collect spools of thread.
Made during Sheridan College
September 2023 - May 2024
Team of 5
Tools and Software
Unity
Procreate, Clip Studio Paint, Photoshop
Miro, Confluence, Jira
Responsibilities
As the Environment / Character Pixel Artist ...
- Designed and created sprite sheets for the characters and UI elements
- Created 2 unique environments with tilesets and backgrounds
- Storyboarded and created ending animatic
- Integrated assets into the build
As the Level Designer ...
- Facilitated the flow and level layout of the entire game
- Worked closely with narrative designers to sequence important beats
- Implemented and iterated levels in engine
As the Project Manager ...
- Held weekly meetings and scrum updates
- Managed the Trello board, master schedule, and game documentation
- Ran playtests and conducted surveys to gather actionable data
Key Takeaways
Keeping expectations known for each team member
As a project manager, my main takeaway is ensuring expectations are known for each member. To keep everyone motivated and accountable, having a measurable barometer of what success looked like is crucial. This means weekly scrums, keeping the Trello up to date, and making dependencies known between the members. In hindsight, I would have had everyone play a weekly build to allow for visibility of the current state of the project.
Designing levels for split focus
E-Ntertainer is a 2-in-1 game; half of it being a Twitch-like chat, the other being an action platformer, and yet both demanded attention. The difficulty of the platforming was dictated by the level of focus required by the player. The levels had to be easily readable but challenging, inviting replayability and perhaps unlocking a different outcome for the v-tuber after a better performance. I also put in breaks of gameplay, like a self moving platform, to entice players to read the chat instead of being glued to the platformer.