António Reis
Game Designer - Narrative and System Design
Hello! I am a game designer, currently working on Dreamscape and Total 11. You can find out more about my involvement in these projects by clicking on their respective images. Please play my games! It would make me very happy. Also, please hire me!
Dreamscape
Total 11
Heart and Mind
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Dreamscape
Click here for most recent available build!
Dreamscape is a puzzle game being developed by myself with Mushroom Kosztolányi, Kimya Taheri, and Jingxing Xu. In the game the player must complete word puzzles to manipulate the different dreams they visit and uncover the dreamer's history.I am serving as one of the lead programmers and narrative designers in the project, but have also contributed to level design and system design, as well as some limited 3D modeling.
The Narrative
Dreamscape is a game about a young woman being trapped in her dreams, and despite the sense of control that her dreams give her over her anxiety, how she must learn to let go and accept the real world so she can wake back up.There was an initial narrative overview document in a Google Doc, but I later shaped the narrative work that we had done into a new document in Google Slides. The new document reworked the main character into a writer, more explicitly connecting her history to the main mechanic, changed details about the levels to better fit the character's history and the game's themes, and more.
Dialogue Puzzle System
The main mechanic in Dreamscape are the word puzzles. The player can use their mouse to move around certain words in the sentence to form new meaning, which forces the dreams to change. I am entirely responsible for the dialogue system, which I created using Pixel Crusher's Unity Dialogue System as a base, primarily for the dialogue tree editing functionality.The system supports dynamically changing capital letters, "homophone words" that change from one word to another, and special "word bank" words that can be removed from their original sentences and inserted somehwere else.
Total 11
Total 11 is a footbal game with RPG relationship mechanics that is in still early in development. The player takes on the role a coach that is hired by a team in a fictional version of the English league, and the game takes place through the course of their season. The in-match gameplay is relatively similar to other soccer simulation games, taking inspiration from Pro Evolution Soccer 6 in particular, but will integrate with special skills and bonuses that can be gained in the out-of-match relationship mechanics, which take inspiration from the Fire Emblem Three Houses system.The main focus so far in development has been creating the in-match gameplay, with basic functionality for passing, shooting, and tackling being implemented, and player A.I. for both teammates and opponents being worked on at the time of writing this. Some work has also been done on creating the characters, the different fictional teams that populate the league, and writing the greater story as well as the smaller story arcs for the different character connections.
Heart and Mind
Click here for most recent available build!
Heart and Mind is a puzzle platformer made with Jerry Chen, Sophia He, Mauricio Luzardo, Jamari Miller, Amber Qu, Jada Rozier-Williams, and Tiffany Yu. The game follows a personofication of an old woman's heart and mind as they try to find Mind's lost crown.I served as one of the lead programmers and level designers in the project, but also led narrative discussions, helped out with producing when necessary, and contributed to other areas of design.
Level Design
I was responsible for the level design for the Mind sections, which focus exclusively on puzzle solving over platforming challenges, and the latter half of Act 3, the hardest levels to complete for the player, where they need to use both the Mind's puzzle solving and the Heart's platforming in quick succession.Both sets of rooms were initially sketched out in-engine with basic blocks, starting with an initial concept, such as having to catch the falling block mid-fall and realizing you can push move up with the light block in your head, and then developed with heavy playtesting.
Heart's Movement
Coding and designing the movement for the characters was by far the most challenging part of development for me. Initially both Heart and Mind could move freely around the level (the second GIF is of Mind with an early version of its block moving ability), but even after settling on only Heart being able to move around, it was still a big challenge to get the right level of sensitivity, weight, and responsiveness for the game.In the end Heart was able to walk, jump, wall jump, wall slide, and has a dash that can break through grass walls, whcih recharges when the player lands back on the floor.
