Between May - August 2024, while balancing a full time internship at Caterpillar Inc., I joined 19 other students to found our own indie game studio, Placebo Entertainment LLC. Together, we dedicated ourselves to make a game part time over the summer.

I served as the project's UX Design Lead, as well as a creative writer, and a 2D artist. In just 4 months, our team completed the development cycle and released Beyond The Marion - a 3D puzzle-adventure game where the player must explore a doomed spaceship, help their alien companions, and escape the time loop trapping everyone aboard.

I was responsible for leading the user interface of the game, creating the story and characters, editing the in-game cutscenes, and helping make 2D art assets.

"How do we create an engaging time loop game with compelling characters, fun puzzles, and an interesting environment - all with in tight 4 month timespan - while balancing full-time internships."

Our goal was straightforward, yet far from easy: to create a game in a single summer that would invoke stress and curiosity in players, featuring endearing characters and a challenge that could only be overcome through trial and error, and the gradual unraveling of information.

Players ages 10 and up, looking for a short, but captivating space adventure, with endearing characters, and puzzle-driven trial and error gameplay.

For Beyond The Marion, I challenged myself to step outside my comfort zone and develop new skills, marking my first foray into creative writing. While I concepted and grey-boxed the UI, I also focused on crafting the lore bible and developing the various NPCs that would populate the game.

At the same time, I collaborated with a fellow UX designer to conceptualize and refine various UI elements, iterating their visuals, layout, and functionality. Through iterative design, testing, and feedback, the final interface was honed to be stylistic and functional, embodying the world and characters of the game though it's visual design.

The early phases of the game focused heavily on both writing and concepting UI designs and layouts. While I was grey-boxing menus and creating UI mockups, I was also dedicated to writing, creating the game's scenario and crafting potential characters that would fit in its world.

My goal during this phase was to gain a comprehensive understanding on the games UI elements, while creating the first draft of its story and characters, given how important they were to our goal.

As the summer went on I worked with our artist, designers, and engineers to see the UI of the game come to life in engine. I teamed up with a fellow UX designer to create the high fidelity mockups, design a custom font, and communicate design concepts. Meanwhile, I worked with art and design to craft 2D art assets in an effort to integrate the tutorialization of various mini game and puzzle mechanics into the world itself.

Additionally, I collaborated with other writers to flesh out the games story and characters, writing dialogue and storyboarding cutscenes. I then took those storyboards and ideas and, with art team, brought those scenes to life visually before editing and finalizing the cutscenes for implementation into the Unity engine.

It was a long and rewarding process, involving myself wearing many different hats. I wish I would show you everything we did!

With our work developing thought the summer, I had the honor to work with fabulous artist and engineers who were able to take my concepts and mockups, and bring them to life in Unity.

Although I wasn't solely responsible for developing every aspect of the game's UI, as I am often used to, it was an incredibly rewarding experience collaborating with various functional teams and disciplines to bring the game's interface to life. Collaborating and sharing design task with a fellow UX designer was a wonderful opertunity, and seeing how the art team translated my UI mockups to gorgeous renders was a marvel to see.

It truly emphasized for me the fact that together we can create far more than what we could alone.

Come the late August 2024, we had successfully reached gold master on the development of Beyond The Marion, with the game formally publishing onto Steam November 6th, 2024! As of writing, the game has seen great reception from players, even receiving a "Positive" rating! Fans greatly enjoyed the game's style, gameplay, and story, clamoring for an expansion to see more!