Lewis Wray MA Games Design

What Went Well? I am proud of the outcome of the project as I believe I achieved what I set out to. I knew from the beginning it would be a difficult task and just making the character run in a circular motion was a challenge from the very beginning. However, I persevered and created an effective and visually interesting mechanic. Because the main purpose of the project was for it to be a demonstration of technical skill, I think this alone makes it a success. All the extra mechanics of the game add to the quality as it demonstrates I have the skills to make an entire game follow the visually appealing style and not just a single mechanic.  What was potentially the most challenging task was making the boss fire lasers at the player. I initially created a laser particle effect and made it fire at the player and deal damage based on a line trace. However, because of the curvature of the tower, the laser would have to travel through the inner wall in order to reach the player if they ...

What Went Well I am pleased with the outcome of the project and believe it is a good demonstration of skill. It was also an effective way of teaching myself new technical design skills and a project I am happy to add to my portfolio. There is a good range of weapons in the game that will keep players engaged. The way this project differs to my previous ones in the fact that, with some polish and real artwork, it could be released as an actual game rather than a prototype or proof of concept. It is similar to the small, simple multiplayer games on Discord. Specifically, I think the camera functionality is a highlight of the game. It is easy to use for the players to pan around the level and view different angles, and it also does a good job of following the action of the game so the players always know what is happening. Another successful mechanic was the level event system. Each level had its own unique event that would occur at the end of each round when all the player have had their...

My initial plan for the game was for each level to be a single floor of a tower. The player would run around it, dodging obstacles and fighting enemies, then climb a ladder to the next floor once they have been all the way round the tower.  I think a better approach would be to have levels extend further vertically and employ stairs and ladders. There could be a lift system in each level, creating a form of fast travelling within a level like in Super Metroid or 1984 game Impossible Mission. Shown below are the maps from the two games that are interconnected by lifts. It would only allow fast travelling to different elevations but it would mean the player is never too far from any location on the tower. https://i.ytimg.com/vi/FI0-UEAB7_o/maxresdefault.jpg https://maps.speccy.cz/maps/ImpossibleMission1.png

6th July 2025 My idea for my new game is a 2.5D game in which the player climbs a tower by completing a floor at a time, running around the circumference until they find a path up to the next floor. The floors could consist of enemies to fight, puzzles to solve platforming challenges to traverse. I began exploration into this idea by experimenting with making a character move around the circumference of circular plane using horizontal input. There were a few complicated tasks involved with this mechanic: The camera must always face the centre The player must rotate with to always face sideways (perpendicular to the radius) Centrifugal force "pushes" the character outward as they run in a circle, so it must be cancelled out Unreal's built-in jump mechanic conserves momentum, making the character move in the straight line when they jump instead of in the circular motion After solving these complications, I had a player that runs in a circle around the circumference of a cyl...

I took a brief break from my "Ballbot Arena" game while I considered in which direction the project should go. I spent this day making a system in Unreal Engine that allowed the player to play a guitar. This would most likely be a minigame in a larger game, similar to the one used in The Last of Us Part Two. Alternatively, this could be used as part of a rhythm game. https://guitar.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/the-last-of-us-guitar@2000x1500.jpg The player can use a keyboard and mouse or a controller. They hold a direction to hold either A chord, D chord, E chord or the open strings. then they can click the mouse button or press the A button to strum. The character's fingers are placed in the correct for each chord so it is realistic for the player.  I completed this project as a test of more finely tuned technical design skills, as most of my projects have only included big picture technical design, creating entire gameplay mechanics for a game. This project is a small...

I used photoshop generative AI to create a splash screen for my game Ballbot Arena. I then used Adobe Illustrator to create a logo for the game the feature on the splash screen.