Ilya Firsov – Sobaka Studio Kiborg Game Designer Portfolio

In the development of Kiborg, I had a variety of responsibilities:

• Redesigned the core concept mid-development, creating a detailed game design document and implementing procedural generation, economy, skill trees, progression systems, and content unlocks
• Designed generation systems, including random events, combat modifiers, special encounters, rewards, balance mechanics, and enemy patterns
• Conceptualized, iterated on, and balanced diverse rogue-lite mechanics such as implants, augmentations, mutators, and weapon modifications, to create engaging and synergistic player builds that evoke a sense of power
• Enhanced the overall game feel by designing camera behavior, optimizing controls, and leading the UI/UX department to deliver a polished and immersive player experience
• Held design ownership of the co-op game mode

Held design ownership of co-op game mode:

• Designed a resurrection mechanic and updated the reward system to take into account 2 players
• Updated balance of enemies, bosses, waves, and ticket system
• Mockuped UI and split-screen HUD

One of the systems I designed was mutators. Mutators are modifiers that the player activates during missions. A few nuances about mutators:

• They have both positive and negative effects. They aim to enhance the player's build and sacrifice options that the player does not focus on
• They have tags. If the player has at least one mutator, the weight of the other with this tag will be higher. This increases the chance of synergy
• They are divided into large and small categories. Large ones are rarer and more valuable

I was responsible for the overall feel of the game, including:

• Camera
• Controls
• Sound
• UI and HUD

I was responsible for the complete setup of maps, including:

• Navmesh
• Arena boundaries and object collisions
• Camera collisions and object transparency
• Placement of spawn points for the player, enemies, hazards, and mission modifiers
• Gameplay sublevel setup
• Physical materials setup

Worked with Lyra framework in order to setup camera modes with smooth and intuitive behavior

In the video above, you can see the camera placement in different modes and transitions between them. For example, the camera slightly moves back during rapid firing to provide a better view for shooting. The target-lock camera, on the other hand, moves closer and has a smaller FOV to focus the player's attention on their target

Below, you can see the prototypes I made for the HUD. On the panel to the left, you can switch between mockups and read descriptions