Lords of the Fallen

Combat Designer II

I joined the project a few months before release and initially worked on boss cameras and NPC fights, which functioned as mini-boss encounters. During this phase, my focus was primarily on enemies before gradually transitioning toward player combat and systems during post-launch support.

A large part of my day-to-day involved custom boss camera setups and NPC fight tuning. I worked extensively on montage pacing, hit precision, spatial control, and moment-to-moment combat flow to ensure encounters felt both readable and impactful.

After release, I shifted toward new content and broader systemic improvements. One of my main contributions during that phase was the design and implementation of Weapon Arts, introduced as part of a major content update. The feature was very well received by players, driving strong community engagement and a noticeable renewed interest in combat builds.

Alongside this, I worked on the Storage Chest feature and provided continuous support on balancing tasks and player-related systems, helping stabilize pacing and tuning across multiple post-launch iterations.

Unannounced Project

Character & Combat Designer

The project was a fantasy MMORPG in early pre-production, developed by a team of 8 designers fully focused on player and enemy combat systems, without strict role separation. I worked as a Character and Combat Designer, contributing across both systems and content during the vertical slice phase.

My day-to-day work focused on designing and prototyping player characters and enemies, including their abilities, resource models, and combat behaviours. I collaborated closely with animators and engineers to validate feasibility, tune timings, and ensure the systems we were shaping were extensible enough to support a full roster later in development.

One of my key contributions was the design and implementation of two boss encounters used in the vertical slice. These prototypes established the game’s baseline for enemy pacing, readability, and systemic interactions, and they served as reference points for expanding both player and enemy content afterward.

Alongside this, I began developing an early balancing pipeline and setting up production processes for content tracking work that would later support team scalability as the project moved beyond prototyping.

Seeds

Gameplay & Combat Designer

I joined the project from day one as a combat-focused systems designer on an early premium RPG prototype. The team explored several directions: real-time ARPG, turn-based with initiative twists, and eventually a JRPG structure, all still rooted in systemic combat experimentation.

My work revolved around defining the combat foundations, prototyping gameplay interactions, and building several experimental systems to test feasibility and direction. A large part of this phase involved hands-on prototyping in Unreal: animation sequencing, combat flow tests, camera exploration, and enemy interaction frameworks.

The most significant system I developed was an early “Anchor & Climb” prototype inspired by large-scale boss interactions. Players could climb giant enemies, target destructible anchors, and alter enemy phases based on positional action. The prototype ultimately proved too expensive to produce, but it helped narrow the project’s direction and clarified the technical boundaries early.

From this exploration emerged a more scalable phase-based system where targeting specific weak points could dynamically alter enemy behaviour and combat flow. In parallel, I designed the early “Seed” mechanic: a turn-based twist where enemies never act on fixed turns, but only react based on the type of “seeds” generated by the player’s actions. Each enemy carried multiple seed gauges (damage, support, disruption…), and player abilities would fill these gauges, triggering contextual reactions. This created a reactive combat loop where the player shaped enemy behaviour through their choices rather than waiting for predefined turns.