Example A – Player Incentive & New Mechanics
(Identifying elements redacted due to NDA)
As a test for this Survival Game on Steam, I was tasked with incentivizing players to build/fortify shelters, and to come up with a new crafting machine.
Example B – Retention & Progression System
(Identifying elements redacted due to NDA)
During my time as a Game Designer making a social, online creative island building game, I made proposals to improve retention and to introduce a proper progression system in the game (among other things).
Example C – “Nom Forest” Game Design Document
Nom Forest is a personal project I have been slowly designing and implementing over the years. Since it is a personal project I can fully disclose its design document.
For a more systems design-focused part of the document, I would like to point out the Food section of the document, where I describe food items, their properties and dynamics, and also the procedures section where I lay down tables detailing processes of modifying and cooking food.
Please note that this is a work in progress, that I make in my limited free time away from work, so the design document is still incomplete, and the game is still in its prototype phase.
The PDF doesn’t show GIFs unless downloaded, so I made the gifs available below.
You can find a functional example of the crop, ingredient and cooking system in the video below.
Example D – Dealing with structured data formats
In the video below, I decipher the .xml files generated by Dwarf Fortress, in order to make a Unity tool that helps players visualize the game’s maps.
Example E – Monte Carlo Simulations
Shooting Accuracy Monte Carlo Simulation
This is a Monte Carlo Simulation I made that iterates shooting a target with varying chances of hitting it depending on different properties like environment, character skill, equipped weapon, etc.
Loot Drop Rates Monte Carlo Simulation
This is a Monte Carlo Simulation to test expected versus actual drop rates. The resulting data shows how much the iterations deviate from the expected percentage amount.
Example F – PETS Milestone & Game Design Document (Working with developers)
This is a personal project where I intended to hire a programmer to help me with development. The game design document uses more technical language due to that and has technical milestones that could be easily turned into tickets in any project management tool, while also using technical, Unity-specific language.
This document also contains very technical rules for generating a chunk-based, finite island world (please check the section “World Generation” in the document above), and I showcase the rules in action in the short video below.
Igor Hatakeyama 