Daniel Mackowick

Reforestation work in depth: 

Note: I was only able to start playtesting the day before the game jam ended, so I took an extra day after the jam had finished to balance and make the game more dynamic and challenging. 

Reforestation was created during the fall 2023 semester in a week long game jam at my school with Respawn Entertainment. The theme of the jam was "The world is the main character," so in a team of 5 we made a lighthearted tower defense where you play as mother nature defending the last piece of untouched land from humanity. I helped with the initial conceptualization for this game, and took on the design role. 

Quick video summarizing what I designed:

What I learned:

This project gave me a much stronger understanding of scope. Our original plan was a lot more complicated than this. We had to cut: levels, towers, excavator’s destroying towers, and natural disaster abilities that had lasting effects on the map, like ice or cactuses along the path. 

Decypher work in depth: 

Decypher was a class project for the fall 2023 semester. The class was called Game Design II, and in a team of 5 I was one of two programmers. The game is about a kid in a fantasy world who needs to get a potion to save her adoptive father from a curse, but is cursed herself. Her language abilities are scrambled, and she must now navigate the world while re-learning how to communicate in the process. I also helped with brainstorming relating to story and gameplay throughout most of development, and designed the UI.

Quick video summarizing what I programmed:

What I learned: 

Planning out short simple but effective well commented code is very important when programming in a group. 

Reinforced the playtesting rules and etiquette that I have been using since game design I.

In production boss fight game:

At UW Madison there is a club called playing for real, where students get together to make a game that relates in some way to career building. At the beginning of the fall 2023 semester I went to a meeting and pitched an idea for a boss fighting game where you climb the ranks in a world filled with monsters protected by hunting organizations. I took on the lead design role in a team of about 15, maintaining a GDD and writing up storyboards.

Quick video summarizing storyboarding:

Storyboards (do not click play, just scroll through like the video): Scale and ui - Boss abilities - Player weapons - Player abilities

GDD: link

New Scale/UI from spring 2024 (click play): link

What I learned: 

Creating a scale and ui storyboard first is much easier for designers and people using the storyboards. 

This is my first semester using figma. I got very comfortable with its layout, and plan to get more advanced with it and rework my storyboards to include animations and clickable objects. 

Competitive PvP game balance essay:

During the summer of 2022 into my freshman spring semester I wrote an essay detailing what game balance is, specifying competitive game balance, and explaining what makes competitive game balance such a struggle in the current industry. This essay is the first in a series, which I plan to write on game mode/ranked system design, tool design, and map design.

Google doc: link