Kevin Chandler
Game Designer and Programmer
Game Design
I have held the role as game designer and level designer on eight different titles, three of which are on steam and on mobile stores right now. While I enjoy trying to think of new and innovative gameplay, I try to be as practical as possible and create designs that can be applied to as many platforms as possible.
Light of Mine
Light of Mine is a VR horror game where you must carry a candle through an abandoned cathedral while avoiding statues that come to life. The catch is that the statues only move when you don't look at them.
Our company received a vive from Valve as so we could test it out but we had a problem in that we didn't have any animators available at the time. So what do you do? You make a game that has none. Our modelers posed the statue models in several scary poses and whenever one would come into view, we would swap between them, creating the illusion of movement.
I also attempted to design a VR control scheme that would keep nausea to a minimum. The main problem we found was sudden stopping and starting had people ripping the headset off within minutes. I implemented a system that used the vive thumb track pads for movement. Since it was analog, one could ease from fully stopped to walking by strafing in the middle of the track pad and moving it out to the edge.
Light of Mine released in 2017 and is out on Steam now.
Tekling
Tekling is a 2D platformer where you start off a level as a vulnerable human but after collecting three pickups you turn into ultra powerful Tekling. It means that each level is designed to be played two ways. You have to be careful and delicate first, then you get to smash through anything in your path.
It was inspired by the feeling you get after completing you get when you get past a particularly tough level and want to obliterate everything for making you work so hard.
I also took a stab at making a mobile friendly platformer control scheme. The key take aways with my research is that you need to get the player looking away from their fingers. Avoiding on screen joysticks I made the left hand of the screen your thumbstick and the right hand jump and put arrow indicators that float below the character to communicate where your thumb was on the joystick.
Tekling was released on iOS and Android in 2017. It has since inspired two sequels using the same basic premise.
For Tekling I was asked to make a game that had a simple premise, could work for mobile, and lent itself well to "one screen" levels. I work with adults on the autism spectrum who are just starting out as level designers. By making a game that had smaller levels built around a single screen they could knock out 10 levels a day with ease and pick the best one or two for the build.
Void Royale
This is an ongoing project that will likely be out in 2022. Inspired by Monster Hunter or Dauntless, it's a multiplayer space combat sim where players work in teams to take out large capital ships.
The one thing that gets a little old with monster hunter style games is that many of the creatures have the same basic configuration so the weak points are the same for each creature. Instead, as you pop open sections of the capital ships, you either get exposed inner hull which when hit will do increased damage, or it will reveal a sub system you can attack and destroy to remove the ability of capital ships to fight back. The locations of these systems changes from battle to battle creating infinite replayability.
It also has the dauntless style gameplay loop where the enemies attack provide armor that is resistant to that type of ship and weapons that damage an opposing type of ship. Dauntless uses fire, ice, lightning, and nature style damage. I was going to use different brands of ships. A brand that specializes in ablative armor is resistant to weapons from a company that uses energy weapons.
Clockwork Damage
I was the game designer and lead level designer for phase 1 of clockwork damage. It began it's life as a narrative driven top down shooter with rpg elements. You played a steampunk cyborg who lost his memories and you would regain them slowly over time as the story progressed. Along with the overall story I wrote a companion comic book that told the story and we had plans for different panels to appear depending on decisions you made in the game.
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