Sam Benson | Game Design




The Resonant Blade is vertical slice of a
first-person fantasy adventure game, where you are an adventurer who has gotten stuck after diving into the depths of a dungeon. To escape, you must solve puzzles and defeat the dungeons guardians.
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The Resonant Blade was the major project for my 2nd year of study at AIE, and for this project my roles were the Producer and Lead Designer.
Game Trailer
PRODUCER
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Running daily stand ups and weekly progress meetings to ensure the game's production was running smoothly.​
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Creating burn down charts and planning milestones to ensure the project met deadlines.​
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Regularly checking in with team members, allowing them the opportunity to raise issues and concerns.​
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Implementing task tracking into weekly sprints using Hack'n'Plan to ensure tasks were tracked, allocated and completed on time.​
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Coordinating ​​​communication across disciplines and with freelancers to reduce miscommunication.

LEAD DESIGNER
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Overseeing all aspects of design, from narrative and voice acting to level, combat, and puzzle design.
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Maintaining documentation​ throughout production to ensure accurate understanding between disciplines.
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Organising playtest sessions and interpreting player feedback for the design team. ​​
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Ensuring all members of the design team were aware of their roles and the common goals they were working towards.
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Working closely with other discipline heads ensure designs were achievable within time constraints.

LEVEL DESIGN
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Creating grey box levels and holding discussions with other designers to review level layouts.​
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Implementing clear and obvious pathing for the player with disappearing bridges and sconces.
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Fine tuning the difficulty progression of puzzles and combat across the level.
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Determining the location of combat encounters to create an enjoyable pacing for the player.
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Pre-planning modularly connecting doorways allowing room rearrangement when required.



COMBAT DESIGN
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Concepting and designing enemy behaviours to assist the programmer in creating the Enemy Behaviour Tree.
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​Adapting enemy behaviours using the Enemy Behaviour Tree to fine tune combat encounters.
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​Adjusting player and enemy attack variables such as damage, attack frequency and range, to enhance the combat experience.
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Balancing combat encounters to have a clear progression through the level.

QUALITY ASSURANCE
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Conducting regular playtests throughout production to search for new bugs.
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Reviewing currently known bugs with the programmer.
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Re-testing bug fixes to ensure bugs were fixed correctly and hadn't created new bugs.
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Conducting smoke tests in the lead up to milestones.
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Organising AB Tests to gather player feedback.

The Team
Producer
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Sam Benson
Designers
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Sam Benson
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Louis Pisani
Programmer
Artists