In early 2026, as the team was reorganizing and reprioritizing goals for the remainder of the year, I jumped in to help out a team I was not assigned to. I saw that they were trying to implement the kind of content I've become deeply familiar with implementing and jumped in to support them.
For this effort, I set up the logic for the climatic boss battle against "The Thing From Beneath." This included the logic for spawning the correct version of the AI depending on what resources the player deposited into the summoning shrine, spawning the correct reward when the boss is defeated, setting up the HUD announcements for the Objective and the Location Name of the boss arena.
Working with my colleagues on this fight, helping them to learn the tools we use to author encounters like this one and supporting them as they iterated on this fight was truly a joy for me.
One of the last features I worked on before my departure from Epic Games was the Embers of Chaos update. The story we're telling is that the Chaos elements that invade our world from the Land of Monsters are starting to overwhelm the land of Ninjago. That manifested itself in a dramatic escalation of the threat coming into the island from the Invasion Portals I implemented for the initial release of Ninjago.
We dramatically increased how frequently these portals opened up and spawned enemies around the player. More importantly, I designed and implemented a brand new escalation system. As players defeat enemies and close off invasion portals, the threat coming from the portals levels up. Eventually, this threat escalates so much that closing a portal will result in the player summoning a brand new boss enemy: the Ice Dragon.
Working on a system like this that ties world-building, story-telling and moment to moment gameplay really gets to the core of what game design is all about for me.