Domhnall Iain Henderson

ROLES
Game Designer & Project Co-ordinator
TIME
2.5 Years (Jan '23 - Sept '25)
TEAM SIZE
6 People
ENGINE
Unreal Engine 5

• more info
• Steam

Squirreled Away

Shipped title

Salt & Ink

School project

ROLES
Scrum Master, Game Designer
TIME
7 Weeks (April '22 - May '22)
TEAM SIZE
13 People
ENGINE
Unreal Engine 5

• More info
• TRY IT ON ITCH!

ROLES
Game Designer
TIME
4 Weeks (Jan '22 - Feb '22)
TEAM SIZE
11 People
ENGINE
Unity 2020

• Try it on itch!

Babymon: Daycare Dropoff

School project

JungleJim

School project

ROLES
Product Owner, Game Designer
TIME
2 Weeks (Oct '21)
TEAM SIZE
6 People
ENGINE
Unity 2020

• Try it on itch!

ROLES
Game Designer & Project Co-ordinator
TIME
2.5 Years (Jan '23 - Sept '25)
TEAM SIZE
6 People (+ external)
ENGINE
Unreal Engine 5

• Steam

Squirreled Away

Shipped title

Gameplay Design

QA/LQA Liaison

Go-To-Market

Player locomotion

The core of the game - being a squirrel. The squirrel power fantasy was our top priority where we did not want to compromise on the free-flowing feeling of leaping from branch to branch, capable of climbing anything and exploring everywhere.Two main challenges popped up due to this tenet:
1. It's frustrating to miss jumps, and
2. How can we create an interesting world if everywhere is instantly accessible?1. To address the former, we found that we should give the player a little assistance in sticking to tree limbs, and so made the player "magnetise" to trees. This wasn't a seamless experience all the time, but infinitely better than missing branches you were meaning to land on.2. After experimenting with level design and other use of other game systems, we settled on limiting the player to climb only on wood-type surfaces. We made exceptions for when it was frustrating for the player otherwise, but this let us use rocks and man-made structures as physical barriers. Additionally, we severely restricted the player's ability to swim, allowing water to be used as a level design barrier. We decided on zoning the park with literal gates, requiring the player to engage in the crafting progression in order to complete the quests associated with overcoming the gates.A final, and perhaps the most critical example of iteration in locomotion, decision was to speed up player character animations, whilst slowing down absolute movement speed. Our final movement speed is over half as slow as the speed we had in the Gamescom demo. Even though we thought squirrels embody speediness, these changes drastically increased the squirrelly feeling.

Player vitals

Our starting point was the common survival traits of hunger, health, and stamina.Tackling hunger was interesting, as a constantly ticking down hunger bar is not something players generally compliment or find "fun". We, however, wanted it to add pressure to the player, using hunger to interrupt their activities and break up their plans. In the end, as we embraced the cosy and relaxing vibe of the game, we cut hunger as having that sort of stress factor was not desirable. We did not, however, cut food from the game. Instead, we blended food into our stamina system - regaining stamina and/or enhancing stamina depending on the complexity of the food consumed.Health is obviously important for a survival game, but we struggled to find a good way to present this to the player. After making the decision to transition from survival to a far more casual and cosy theme, we took inspiration from classic adventure games like Zelda, and used simple hearts to represent our simple health system.Stamina was the most controversial stat. There are many ways to design a stamina system - even using the word "energy" changes the meaning. We spent a lot of time, with help from our producers, finding purpose for stamina. We dispensed with an auto-replenishing stamina system à la Grounded, as we felt this wasn't interesting or restrictive enough with how often the player would deplete stamina (using tools). We were inspired instead by Death Stranding's stamina system, where one's maximum energy would slowly trickle down through actions. This would prompt the player to return to their base in order to rest and restore the energy. Mixing in some Valheim-inspired food, where max stamina could be temporarily enhanced by cooking meals, we came up with a unique stamina system which served our game elements well.In retrospect, we could have added a lot of playing time to Squirreled Away if we implemented a hunger system. We would not want to detract from the cosiness and make it too stressful, but I think this would create an engaging gameplay loop. Perhaps it could have succeeded health, as I believe health sits in an odd place with little good purpose. Additionally, we may have over-engineered our stamina system, even if I am happy with its result.

Player activities

We managed to provide the player with an array of activities for them to engage with as they explored the world: treehouse building, crafting, collecting, mining, chopping, bonking, digging, treasure hunting, questing, fishing, throwing stink bombs at seagulls - and this is after cutting a bunch. All in multiplayer.This was a monstrous amount of work for everyone in the team. Fortunately our programmers set up many of the systems in a data-driven way. This allowed us to easily add new items and building pieces to the game. Us designers could then further customise behaviour using Blueprints.

UI/UX

As a small team, we worked in close collaboration and had a wide berth of responsibilities. This is definitely true for myself. As one of two designers, we were involved almost everywhere, including UI (design and feedback).Predominantly, I gave feedback to our artist for UI across the board, from HUD elements, to inventory screens and tutorials.Additionally, I was responsible for implementing some UI, like the health and stamina HUD elements. However, I enjoyed iterating on elements like the item pickups more.

Go-to-market

We had a lot of help from our investors to get Squirreled Away out into the world, and their guidance with marketing efforts was no different.I was predominantly responsible for the Steam store page, capturing GIFs and dealing with the back end of the site, co-ordinating the efforts of the release & marketing team of our investors with feedback and support from the internal team. This was a fine line to walk, balancing the game itself with how much to pull people away to work on marketing materials and tools.This process gave me a huge amount of respect for marketing and the work which goes into launches.

Salt & Ink

School project

ROLES
Scrum Master, Game Designer
TIME
7 Weeks (April '22 - May '22)
TEAM SIZE
13 People
ENGINE
Unreal Engine 5

• Try it on itch!

Gameplay Design

Scrum Master

World map

Inscryption (from Devolver Digital) was a strong influence for this project. Specifically, we felt the use of board game miniatures was a unique and quirky idea. So, we lent into this for the 'world map' section of the game.

This map room went through a couple of iterations in regards to the UX. To begin, playing with physics for the interaction feedback felt like the right way to go, and in hindsight I regret not sticking with this approach more as this would better match the board game feeling. Regardless, halfway through the 7 weeks, we changed directions and transformed the interactive parts to 2D, more akin to Inscryption.

The room was designed to feel as if the player would be inside the caravan. Apart from the art, there are two factors aiding this. The first is the level sequence as the level loads. This is to give the feeling of stepping up to the table to plan your trip. The second is the camera shake after you select the next destination. This is to highlight the parallel between the mini caravan on the table and your own ‘real’ caravan.

This whole map scene and the encompassing interactions was received very favourably with the review panel as well as playtesters, for which I am quite proud.