Professional
Noctua Interactive · Amazon Games · KIXEYE · EA / Maxis
Shipped and live-service work, plus the pitches behind it.
Studio projects are under NDA, so this page covers my role, decisions and results. Footage appears only where the studio has cleared it: Noctua cleared DreamWalkers and Dawnblade in October 2026.
| Results
13% → 20%
D1 retention after my New User Experience redesign · War Commander: Rogue Assault (KIXEYE)
10 in 2 days
Playable pitch prototypes for a major enterprise client, every core loop paying off in under 10 seconds · Noctua Interactive
19% → 31%
D3 retention after my boss encounter and AI redesign · Storm Runners (Amazon Games)
2 of 2
Design interns I mentored on DreamWalkers, both hired full-time
| Noctua Interactive
DreamWalkers
Nov 2023 – Feb 2026. I owned all of the design on Noctua’s flagship: core mechanics, combat systems, player progression and art direction. Three asymmetric playable heroes, each with its own combat style, so switching heroes changes how you play, not just how you look. I scripted the core combat loops myself in UE5 Blueprint, wrote the specs engineering, art and narrative built from, and mentored two design interns, both hired full-time.
LEAD DESIGN · COMBAT · FOOTAGE CLEARED BY NOCTUA
Combat iteration: early test → updated build
The first combat test was a grey grid and one enemy, but it already had the core beat: evade, punish, and the enemy breaks apart. About four weeks later the same loop ran in the forest against groups, with chain lightning for crowd control.
OCT → NOV 2025
Dawnblade: created, wrote and pitched
Hand-painted 2D animation at 3D speed. Dawnblade (Shadow of the Realm) is a side-scrolling beat ’em up I created, wrote the story for and pitched. Hand-drawn fighting-game animation is beautiful but slow and expensive, so I built a pipeline that keeps the look and cuts the cost.
PITCH · FOOTAGE CLEARED BY NOCTUA
The Dawnblade pipeline
Mocap in Blender to lock timing, weight and silhouette → render each move to a numbered frame sequence → paint every frame by hand in Aseprite → run the painted frames as flipbooks in Unreal. A new attack can be iterated in hours with its timing already right, and combat design never waits on a full hand-drawn pass.
ANIMATION PIPELINE · TECH ART
| Pitches and earlier studios
Enterprise training pitch · Noctua, 2026
I came back to Noctua as a pitch design consultant (Oct 2026 – present) to lead design on a pitch to a major enterprise client: a mobile training product built as short, respectful mini-games. 10 playable prototypes in 2 days, every core loop paying off in under 10 seconds on a stopwatch, and a Presenter Mode so the live demo can’t be derailed.
UNDER NDA · NO CLIENT DETAILS
Amazon Games · Storm Runners
Game Designer (L5 / Senior), Live-Service & Engagement, Nov 2018 – June 2023. Designed and scripted systemic bosses and AI behavior trees (D3 retention 19% → 31%), owned the content strategy and progression loops (D1 23% at soft launch), set up A/B testing with UX and analytics. On the studio’s pitch team I built and presented concepts adapting licensed film and TV properties.
F2P MOBILE · LIVE SERVICE · PITCH TEAM
KIXEYE · EA / Maxis
KIXEYE, Game Designer / Narrative Designer, Oct 2015 – Oct 2018: designed the War Commander: Rogue Assault onboarding (D1 13% → 20%), owned mid-to-late-game features and balance, and wrote four campaign seasons of story. EA / Maxis, QA Development Analyst II, 2006 – 2015: where I learned how games break. I still test my own designs like a QA lead.
SHIPPED · LIVE