Discipline 02 — Game & Systems Design
I design from a conceptual touchstone. A core idea that each project is built around, and referred back to whenever it drifts or becomes overly complex. The method holds across very different applications: a merciless bureaucracy sim, a cozy solo builder, and a system abstracted from a game.
On the team build I led both design and production. Not just the systems, but the documentation and cadence that shipped them.
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Each project is built around a single idea every system has to answer to. Here each are presented with their respective touchstones, and the mechanism to where it shows the clearest.
A merciless world built on fair systems.
A bureaucracy and diagnosis sim set in a frozen frontier clinic. The world is cruel, but the rules are scrupulously fair, and the Delivery Man is where that touchstone lives: one NPC couples diagnosis, heat, and survival so tightly that every supply order is a single bet across all three. No loss ever feels arbitrary; it reads as something you let happen. On this project, I led the design and production of the systems, the docs, and the cadence that shipped them.
Read the deep dive →Motivation without failure.
A cozy aquarium-shop sim built on a hard question: how do you keep a player invested when they can't really lose? The answer? One creative act, like arranging a tank, pays into everything at once: it draws customers, scores your photo-competition entries, and is its own reward. Progression is gated by creative rank, not money. You advance by making nice things.
Read the deep dive →Fidelity that stays editable.
An open-source factory-layout tool for Satisfactory. A way for me to prove that the systems thinking can reach past games into pure systems. The touchstone: a plan has to be faithful enough to rebuild in-game brick-for-brick, yet fluid enough for someone to keep editing. Belt and pipe "runs" are where it resolves. The game's own belt-length limits encoded into one movable, splittable paths. As much design discipline went into the ideas that I cut as what I actually built.
Read the deep dive →/ Stack
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