"Syke is a first-person exploratory puzzle game set in a mysterious and
beautifully warped reality. You play as an individual making their way
through areas of strange geometry; solving puzzles to piece together the
story of their love."
Syke was my capstone project graduating from the University of Utah. It is also a highly-rated Steam game which has shipped about 30,000 copies and maintained a "
very positive" review score since release, even reaching the "New & Trending" tab for free to play games in the days after release! It is an ambitious, surreal, and creative game, made by a very passionate student team.
Syke is really something special!
Unreal 5.3, Miro, HackNPlan
9 Months
9-Person Subteam in a 31-Person Studio
Design Subteam Producer
Syke's "je ne sais quoi" was our research into comparable titles and our dedication to carving a unique niche for ourselves. At the time of our initial pitch, there were only 44 games with the Steam tags we were targeting. This meant, of course, that we couldn't rely on genre to guide our designs. As producer, I endeavored to communicate the vision to the team through speaking, writing, visuals, and gameplay; by targeting the four learning styles, I quickly unified our vision moving forwards.
Along with the production team, I developed pitch materials and participated in all presentations.
Syke's original pitch presentation was given to a panel of faculty, industry guests, and over 200 peers and potential teammates.
Despite the relatively large size of the team, Syke still had a very ambitious scope for our timeline and experience level. I found myself regularly getting into engine and helping designers realize their vision. The above video is a prototypes for a cut "perspective shifting" mechanic. As a team, these prototypes helped us narrow in on a vision for the game and demonstrated our ability to deliver the promised game. On a personal level, staying in engine gave me the ability to be realistic about design and engineering requirements, and get hands-on when bugs appeared.
Working on Syke was my first experience with a team of this size. Team communication and organization was primarily conducted on Discord, and I've included some samples below! During the early stages of development, establishing a regular meeting cadence and format was one of my top priorities, and I continued to iterate on our structure throughout Syke's development cycle.
Keeping an entire team up-to-date on design can be a challenge, and these are just some of the tools I experimented with.
Accommodating to different schedules and maintaining an "open door" policy helped iteration stay healthy.
Ensured that the team was aligned on our design goals, and provided a space to ideate.
By bringing together different teams, new concepts and technical specifications could be developed.
During every meeting with design or production staff, I would record notes and type them up for dissemination.
At the top of each week, I sent a reminder for any meetings, deadlines, and general notes for the team.
Introduced later in development, I would meet with the team to discuss what worked well and what needed to change.
During Syke's development, I took ownership of our documentation in Miro. It was my responsibility to ensure that all design documentation and timelines were accessible to everybody on the team. Keeping dependencies, objectives, and design goals clearly communicated and regularly updated helped us stay accountable. Contact me for a tour!
Halfway through development, I proposed a significant level design pivot and worked with designers and the production team to ensure we kept the game within an achievable scope, while maximizing our impact. Considerations included:
The second half of Syke's development was built around an extremely strict timeline. When one of our level designers took an extended health-related leave, I volunteered to help wrap the level up and avoid costly content cuts or pivots.
The visual identity of Syke was driven by "the forb," the games iconic forest hub level. Our logo, which can be seen on the T-shirts I'm printing above, is inspired by the visual of the central tree hanging upside-down in the orb. For our convention presence, I leaned into the eclectic aesthetics of the game, with the game running on an old CRT monitor draped in vines and old books.
