Joseph Nastri | Game Designer
Magnus Venari:
Prima Materia Trials
Project Overview
Magnus Venari is a puzzle role-playing game that was influenced by games such as Legend of Zelda and Zenith. Venari was a capstone project with a 4 month development cycle that included stages of Prototyping, Design, Development, and Quality Assurance. As project lead I was responsible for making sure the game was on pace for weekly and monthly milestones as well as providing help to keep the project moving forward.
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Project and Design Lead
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Designed 4 of the 7 levels while integrating the levels together to form a cohesive gameplay experience.
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Maintain the integrity of the project's repository by handling all merge conflicts through Perforce.
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Engineered the following core gameplay systems:
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Character movement
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Ability-based combat system
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Questing system
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Puzzle interactions
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Design Goals
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Make an immersive puzzle rpg that has multiple solutions with only a few mechanics.
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Create a multi-level game that each highlight a specific ability.
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Communicate well with artist and Sound Engineer.
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Develop and Design all mechanics and system in the game.
The main skill I focused on during this project was leadership. I wanted to work on communication between multiple departments and ensure our vision of the game was properly achieved. I was able to accomplish this by leading our standup meeting, managed the Trello board and handled communication between our group and other departments.
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One challenge we faced as a group was redesigning and adapting the game midway through production. We shifted from an action stealth game with hints of puzzle solving to a pure puzzle game after receiving feedback from players and our producer. Through communication and collaboration our team made a seamless transition into the new concept.
Post Mortem
