Thing-in-Itself
Ted and Molly are together. Ted feels a connection to Molly wherever he looks.
But, how do they both really see the relationship? See each other?
“Thing-in-Itself” is an interactive short story about the struggles of understanding another human being. Using Immanuel Kant’s concept as a framework, it leads the player through stages of a relationship, exploring how perceptions may clash and surroundings can alter.
With an average walkthrough time of 15 minutes, “Thing-in-Itself” is not a game in a traditional sense – it doesn’t have win or lose conditions and doesn’t present challenge to the player.
With this project, Party for Introverts attempts to establish a connection between the mediums of game and short story, reworking the possibilities when narrative and interactivity merge.
To be a Shadow
“To be a Shadow” is a 2D multiplayer-focused game for PC and Mac. It is a competitive stealth action set in the heart of Japan, where the players will have a chance to compete with each other as ninja warriors of the highest ranked underground Clans of the country. The warriors, even being ninjas, have a limited field of vision, which makes the gameplay of a battle unique and allows to sneak up to your opponent and get a more prestigious kill or disregard the caution and count on your reaction and strength in a noble open fight. You can also find vials with experimental drugs on the arena field that can allow you to temporarily expand your human capabilities: get an Eagle-, 360- or X-Ray-vision.
Prisoner’s Cinema
Prisoner’s Cinema is a narrative-driven, expressive game being developed by a student team at Carnegie Mellon University. It conveys to players the subjective sensation of living a life subdued by insomnia, and that evokes from players an empathetic response. Regarding empathy, we want players unfamiliar with feelings of alienation to gain an understanding of how an affliction like insomnia can impact the sufferer physically, mentally, and emotionally, and we want players who have experienced or are experiencing the existential, societal ramifications of sickness to understand that they are not alone.
Building Virtual Worlds
During the first semester at Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center there is a course called Building Virtual Worlds, or BVW, where students develop 5 projects, each done in approximately 2 weeks, with a new professor-assigned team every time. The course culminates in BVW show where the best projects are shown to a crowd of over 500 spectators in a public forum.
In all of the worlds I have worked on, I’ve made strong contributions to game design, and you can take a look at these games here.
Design documents
Dave’s Drawn Adventures
Dave’s Drawn Adventures is a story about growing up, presented in a form of a 2d platformer.
Design document:
Full version: Dave’s Drawn Adventures – full version (pdf)
In case if you don’t have time to read the original document (8 pages), here is a brief version.
Brief version: Dave’s Drawn Adventures – brief version (pdf)
Mission design/AI scripting
Postal III
Postal III is an AAA action/adventure project developed by Trashmasters and Running with Scissors. While working in Trashmasters company, I designed and implemented several missions in the game basing on documented requirements, and also I programmed NPC behavior on these missions.
Game Design for a Geolocation Social Network
AlterGeo
For some time I was as a game designer in a geo-location service “AlterGeo”. It probably may be described as something between “SCVNGR” and “Foursquare”. My main task there is to make life of the people who use this service more fun and unusual by deriving interesting challenges for them in real life, and constantly improving all other social gaming features of the service. I am responsible for the content of these challenges and for game balance. I also have to trace social trends, get information about what people like more in our service and in my challenges particularly, and to improve the service in these directions.
Level/Mission design
Bad Trip
Bad Trip is a level of a FPS game, representing a hallucinogenic trip of a poisoned gangster. He was thinking constantly for the last few months about his immoral life, and regrets he has chosen that path.
Director’s description of the level: Bad Trip (pdf)
Level prototype was made in UnrealEd (version for the game “XIII”).
App Design
Noise Shelf
Noise Shelf is the first app I’ve designed and produced.
It is a free app available at Google Play here.
Description:
Make a soundtrack for your own life!
Noise Shelf free app will allow you to make a collection of sounds for any situation and play it immediately for the joy of your friends and people around you.
You can also easily record your own sounds right in the app to make more funny stuff with it, or simply make notes to self and use Noise Shelf as a dictaphone.
Noise Shelf is fun!
Usage example from The Big Bang Theory:
Arseniy Klishin 