I am working on mixing my Undergraduate Philosophy studies, Art and Video Games Design. I am interested in learning and mastering all aspects of content design so as to become an even more rounded game designer.
My parents are both artists. This, intertwined with our family's gaming enthusiasm, propelled me very directly into dreaming of becoming a games designer and exploring how I can express my own vision of fun in this medium.
You play Max, a corgi wizard. Shoot magic balls at goblin pugs and cats, gain experience, and upgrade your magic abilities. The goal is to defeat all enemies and survive to the end.
Made in the 42 Berlin Game Jam, August 2026, in Godot. A prototype playable in the browser.
Controls: arrow keys or WASD to move, Space to dash and dodge red spells, Shift to parry green spells, P or Esc to pause, T to turn off auto-aim.
Team: inadequacy, Luzi1234, Unit_ZT, pkevinklein, 4xchuu.
You are invited as a guest to a night of intrigue at Cheese Manor. Mingle with the other guests, explore the manor, and collect clues and talk to people to uncover its secrets before time runs out. A journal records your clues.
Made in Godot during Global Game Jam 2026 at SAE Institute, and polished in the days after. Playable in the browser, with a Windows download.
Controls: WASD to move and pan the journal, J for the journal, E and Q to zoom, F to interact.
Team: Harriet Davey, Sophie Solovyeva, inadequacy.
This project was a clear deviation from the previous ones. We were assigned a concept that we were tasked to interpret and create. I worked with a very talented team that gave me space to work exclusively on design tasks. I did a lot of research into accessibility and created the guidelines for the message our game was to communicate, and worked on narrative design, system design, mechanic design and the balancing for our game.
I looked at similar board games, as well as Civilization, and saw what they did well before making paper prototypes to test out our core game play. Once we were satisfied with that, we started working on the additional systems we wanted to add to the challenge. I spent a bulk of my time between testing and giving feedback on our system concepts, then balancing the associated values and testing every element implemented, right up until submission.
For this project we had a greater emphasis on systems design. We made a strategy game with zero input randomness, with the goal of a game that could be experienced like chess. I learned a lot about designing games and engine usage in this project. Having such an intensive relationship with Unreal Engine taught me a new level of respect for programming and rekindled my desire to learn more about prototyping and engine usage.
With Findr I took a lot of initiative and had already decided on a premise before I started finding people to work with. Luckily the talent found me, and we quickly decided on a story we wanted to pursue and found the tools required to start working on our project: Unity and Fungus.
We wove surreal elements into the game and story, but found that this art style isn't the easiest to execute, so we needed to take time to really learn about it. Despite the circumstantial difficulties our group managed to finish the project within the ten weeks we had, and we are all quite proud of what it has become.
In pre-production we brainstormed our concept and story, aiming to create something unique in a saturated genre. Our main references were Monster Prom and Ace Attorney. We created player personas and conceptualized how we would engage each of them. At the start we overscoped, believing we would make several storylines and characters. After working for a while we realized one character would be enough for the time we had, with several hidden branches and goodies for dedicated players.
By working with a clear reference I had an easy time creating our initial prototypes with our programmer and testing how our game play loop would work. I sketched simple concepts for further mechanics, then worked them into the level concept made by a fellow designer. After feedback, updates and polish, I used the tool made by our programmer to implement each walkable tile in 2.5D space.
Siniath Ambar: West Marches Roleplaying Group