Senior/Lead Game Designer – Gameplay Systems and Procedural Content (Mutators)
Airship Syndicate - Built in Unreal 4

• Owned design and implementation of the Dungeon Mutator System, a procedural combat modifier layer that drove replayability, challenge variety, and long-term engagement.

• Delivered over 40 unique mutators, each introducing distinct combat conditions (environmental hazards, enemy buffs, player debuffs, scaling mechanics) while ensuring clarity, balance, and replay depth.

• Led end-to-end development of the system, from early paper design and prototyping through scripting, integration, playtesting, and live balancing.

• Established implementation standards and best practices for mutators, enabling other designers to quickly create high-quality, reusable content.

• Created technical design documentation, flowcharts, and functional workflows that aligned design, engineering, art, and production on system goals.

• Partnered closely with engineering to develop scalable frameworks and data-driven pipelines that reduced friction for mutator creation and future expansions.

• Mentored and supported fellow designers, providing reviews, feedback, and training on procedural event design and system integration.

• Balanced mutator combinations and difficulty scaling, ensuring content remained challenging without overwhelming players, and tuning for varied player skill levels.

• Collaborated with encounter and combat teams to integrate mutators seamlessly into dungeon design, reinforcing synergy between core combat systems and procedural layers.

• Contributed to live operations by gathering player feedback, monitoring engagement metrics, and iterating mutator balance post-launch.

• Positioned the Mutator System as a flagship feature, extending Wayfinder’s lifecycle and giving the game a sustainable procedural endgame loop.

On Wayfinder, I had the opportunity to own one of the game’s most ambitious systems! We called it the Dungeon Mutator System.

From the earliest design sketches to final implementation, I built a framework that let us layer procedural challenges and modifiers onto dungeons. Achieving our goal of creating dynamic, replayable combat experiences.

Over the course of development I designed and shipped over 40 unique mutators, each with its own twist on gameplay, from environmental hazards to enemy enhancements and player tradeoffs. It was a huge design and technical challenge! Balancing clarity, difficulty, and fun while keeping the system scalable and performant was truly a great experience. This went on to become one of Wayfinder’s defining features.

I’m proud not only of the content itself, but also of the standards, tools, and documentation I created that empowered other designers to extend the system quickly and consistently.