While I was with 343i / Microsoft, working on Halo, I was tapped to help out the Sunset Overdrive team during their most critical moment, preparing the E3 Playable Demo. I co-design the E3 gameplay, onboarding and UI experience while working directly with the Insomniac game team to refine the play through of that experience. I did further work that reached beyond E3 and made its way into the final product. This work was done in partnership with Microsoft and Insomniac Games Art and UI teams.

HUD / Character Creation / Character Customization / in-game systems

Boosting the in game HUD

The HUD is one of the most important aspects of a shooter. It provides feedback on state of resources, current objectives, direction of baddies and currently equipped hardware. Without this information being clearly presented, the user is left in the dark having to guess what's going on. It can make or break your game play experience.

In world character setup concept

I'd presented a concept for integrating character setup intothe first boot experience. This concept was an attempt to quickly get the player setup without taking away from the amazing experience that the game team created. We explored it until discovering the tech costs to be too high given the remaining project cycle.

Character customization system

For a game like Sunset Overdrive, character customization is a key component to giving the player a unique experience. In this game, customization was called Vanity vs. other games where different gear has different values. So we designed a system that was fun to play with, easy to use and could facilitate both unique configurations as well as "Sets" that allowed Insomniac to drop custom setups that players could equip. We also needed to support the player in equipping their tools and toys throughout the game menus.