Dominic Fanaris

In my tenure at Heart Machine I worked for two and half years as a Junior Technical Designer on Possessor(s), an Action-Metroidvania published by Devolver Digital.

I was responsible for creating first drafts of enemies in an initiative to greatly expand the roster of combatants the player would fight throughout their play-through. With minimal external support besides concept art and rough designs for each enemy, I utilized blueprint scripting and behavior trees to create basic prototypes with the philosophy of increasing the complexity and level of decision-making required of combat scenarios. These enemies demanded varied approaches and strategies to defeat, while maintaining a balanced and fair fighting experience, whether encountered alone, or in combination with other foes. At the time it ended up almost doubling the number of enemies in the game, although many would be cut later in development due to time constraints in other departments. Those that remained would be fine-tuned over time through extensive QA and playtesting to ensure the aforementioned design and balance philosophies were enforced.

I also did the bulk of the design and implementation of Affixes, an RPG-like system of upgrades the player would equip to their gear, allowing further customization and build-crafting beyond weapon selection. We chose an array of stats to tweak through affixes, and always opted for greater boosts more noticeable in moment-to-moment gameplay than incremental buffs, allowing players to immediately and substantially feel the effects of an affix after equipping it. To further create meaningful builds and combos, each affix also had a significant gameplay effect beyond a stat boost; These effects would be much more scenario specific and powerful, such as bursts of damage or healing when dodging attacks.  Giving players these tools allowed for much more interesting deliberation when it came to choosing their build and personalizing it to their playstyle.

In addition, I collaborated with departments to create requested tools and features, including working with level designers to create interactable elements such as elevators, timed gates, room transitions, and more. I also worked with our art team implementing externally created work such as player and enemy animations. For the PS5 version of the game, I implemented and hooked up trophies and activities both in engine and online through Playstation's development portal, allowing players to view their progress through the game and earn achievements on console. I also set up reactive trigger effects and lights exclusive to the PS5 controller to enhance the player experience. These features were tested through hardware devkits to ensure intended effects and fix issues. In general we performed many rounds of playtesting and bug-fixing through development and up to the launch of the game on PC and console, and published a number of post-launch updates addressing player-found bugs and suggestions.

One of the projects I've worked on as a Gameplay Engineer at NerveLabs was The Lantern of the Laughless Saint, an Open World RPG inspired by the Elder Scrolls series, which released this year.

Early in development I contributed to a lot of prototypes for enemies and interactables, creating quick workable level elements and NPCs that allowed for layouts and playtesting in the first stages of production. Much of our development was built on the Unreal framework Narrative Pro 2, which we upgraded and altered to fix issues and enforce preferences specific to our development. 

Later in development we did a much deeper pass on enemies to make encounters more varied and interested, in which I worked extensively in behavior scripting, utilizing Unreal Engines Gameplay Ability System and behavior trees to create a large variety of attack patterns and strategies for various enemies and NPCs. Our goal was to make NPCs much smarter and more distinct in their behaviors and how they would approach combat. For example, we made them much more cognizant of the types of weapons they could utilize and when they were most effective; Enemies would pull out bows and spells when the player made too much distance or attacked from an unreachable position, and conversely would draw their blades and fight in a more close quartered manner when the player closed the gap to strike. Some enemies would keep their distance and flank the player, while others stood their ground and defended a specific position. This effort greatly refreshed combat in general and made enemies much more stimulating to encounter.

Other engineering support included implementing audio and animations, technical polish/fixes for UX/UI, and bug-fixing/balancing based on both internal and external feedback. I helped set up bank-based audio events that allowed us to author different sound effects based on what object was being considered, such as what weapon a player was holding when swinging and striking, or what kind of object was being rooted through for loot. Much of our bug-fixing and balancing was done through internal playtesting, but we also held multiple public playtests in our discord server, allowing a much broader range of input and experience that was pivotal to our development.