As a Senior Game Designer at Survios, I acted as Game Director for Puzzle Bobble VR: Vacation Odyssey which released in 2021 for Oculus Quest and Quest 2. A little later in 2021, I helped ship a new version of the game for both VR and flatscreen on PS5, called Puzzle Bobble 3D: Vacation Odyssey. These were my first forays into being a Game Director, which was incredibly rewarding and exciting for me.
During my time on Puzzle Bobble, I defined all the features we would ship, oversaw design of level mechanics and power-ups, implemented tutorials and so much more. I took care to establish a rapport with each discipline on the team, scheduling regularly occurring review meetings and playtests.
Media
I had the opportunity to do interviews with the media to support the release of Puzzle Bobble 3D: Vacation Odyssey. Here is a sample of some of those interviews.
Interview with HipHopGamer Part 1
Interview with HipHopGamer Part 2
PlayStation Blog Preview
Gematsu Interview
PlayStation Universe Interview
Tutorial Design
I worked with UI engineering and UI Design to implement the tutorials that appear as part of the FTUE. With extremely limited scope and time, we successfully communicated the game's core controls and rules as quickly and efficiently as possible.
We also authored special tutorials to display whenever the player unlocks one of the game's three power-ups.
Flatscreen Controls
The secondary release of the game on PS4 and PS5 was an incredibly unique design challenge. Converting a game that been designed from the ground up specifically for VR to a non-VR platform was fascinating. I got to dive deep into 3C's as we came up with a bespoke control scheme that would translate our VR game to controllers gracefully. Nailing the camera ultimately involved implementing a system that anchored the camera on the gameboard but allowed it to orbit off of center to follow the player's aim.
Design Docs
The Rainbow Bubble was a level mechanic we integrated to get a combo mechanic into the game. Iterating on the feel and timing of how the Rainbow Bubble matches propagate to the rest of the board was a super satisfying detail to iron out.
The Paintbrush Powerup was designed as a way for players to kill two birds with one stone. They can pick whatever color they want for the bubble they're firing, and also change bubbles in the puzzle to whatever color they'd like.