Par For The Dungeon

Par for the Dungeon was a project I originally started on my own, as part of a game jam, “The Blackthornprod Game Jam,” and took place over the course of one week in January 2021.

Out of over 1 thousand games submitted as a part of the game jam, Par for the Dungeon was ranked 9th overall and was featured in a video showcase created by the host of the jam where he highlighted his 17 favourite projects.

Over a year after this initial version of the game was made, our team was beginning the process of looking for a new project to take on and Par for the Dungeon was the natural choice. This is when I took on the role of creative director for the project, leading our team as we built into what we hope to be the flagship franchise for the company. Par for the Dungeon is due for release in late 2023.

Duties

• Designed and developed core gameplay mechanics and game loop

• Created tools and systems necessary to rapidly build content for the game

• Developed shaders and rendering pipeline to efficiently render the game on low end devices

Learnings

• Learned techniques to design mechanics that can translate into a variety of interesting puzzles/levels

• Refined my process for designing around the production capabilities of our team; creating better games in a shorter period of time

• Developed a deeper understanding of mobile hardware limitations and how to execute on an art style that scales well on a variety of platforms

DevLogs

Much of the development of Par for the Dungeon has been documented on team's YouTube channel.

Here is a selection from the many videos that were made; in the first you can see the beginning of the game's transition from jam-game to full-game and the second where you can see some details about the technical art pipeline I developed.