My role as a Game Designer and 3D artist

During my time in school, my primary goal was to familiarize myself with various game design styles and collaborate with as many different people as possible. I approached the program with the ambition to create not only video games but also a board game and even advocated for the creation of a pinball table.

I played a crucial role in assembling the MAGIBUG team. I pitched the idea of developing a board game to some of my peers. During our year, there was a shortage of programmers willing to assist our program with game development, and I believed that this type of game would be a perfect solution, one that would allow game design students and concept art students to collaborate and complete a project.

Once the team was formed and we received the green light to start the game jam, we convened over Discord and began brainstorming. Immediately, two distinct ideas emerged: a monster battling game and a power of friendship game. The team leaned toward the friendship game idea with some elements of the monster battling concept.

Originally, we referred to it as "The Canadian Game" because it revolved around helping your friends win from the beginning. This was one of the most challenging concepts to design because it was unconventional to create a game where the goal was to ensure someone else's victory. Early in the conceptualization, the game incorporated a "Magical Girls" theme. Throughout the year, I advocated for inclusivity and diversity, and I was thrilled that our characters would be diverse, breaking away from the typical anime genre conventions.

During my time on MAGIBUG, I modelled the game's board and pieces and began sculpting its characters. The board and tokens made it into the Tabletop Simulator prototype, and I used pre-existing models based on an anime character the team loved to create placeholder meeples through kit-bashing.

The team regularly tested the prototype with various groups of friends, peers, and students from our college. These tests were carefully documented and analyzed by the design team, leading to iterative improvements.

I found the constant iterations and ideation that seemed to have gone on throughout the entire year without much structure to be challenging. This sometimes led the design team to iterate based on the slightest opinions, which I found chaotic. I learned the importance of clear-cut decision-making and having someone in place to mediate this process. At this point, I shifted my focus from game design and began sculpting the characters for 3D printing for use in a physical prototype.

Unfortunately, the project came to an end when we all graduated, and a physical prototype was never created. Despite this, I had made excellent progress on the character sculpts, the concept team had nearly completed the required art, and the design team had created a solid and profitable game.