Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery
Associate Game Designer - Jam City
January 2018 - October 2019
Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery is a cinematic mobile 3D experience set in the Harry Potter universe. My role on the team was to create individual set pieces, scenes, content of quests, and each 3D level. Later, when the game was launched, I supported live events, content releases, and new features introduced to the game. I was on the project since before the game was in beta, saw it release worldwide, and continued to support the game as it was live!
Duties
Led development for design practices and processes
Used filmmaking and cinematography skills in tandem with level design to create levels and scenes
Blocked out individual areas with 3D art for scene placement
Level Design: Responsible for making new quests, scenes, and individual levels
used Autodesk Maya for scene implementation
Configured camera placement, cinematic timing, animations, character behavior
Itemized animations and props to request from art for certain key scenes
Creation and implementation for new game features, such as Classes, Quidditch, Wizard Duelling
Led design on combat encounters, character hangouts, and scenarios
Training and ramp up of new hires on development processes and practices
Designing combat encounters for a more cinematic experience
A challenge that a lot of mobile developers face is knowing that such a large audience means that they need to accommodate both the most skilled and least experienced player when designing a scenario.
The dragon fight at the end of Year 5 functionally has the same amount of health as another boss enemy, but has an enlarged health pool. It also starts with a debuff, reducing its health every turn.
Seeing the boss’s health tick down simultaneously conserves the canon threat of the dragon (large health pool) and the feasibility that the player character is able to overcome the encounter.
Forgive me for gushing a bit, but this is why I love game design. Although the encounter may be mechanically the same as another, small connections between in game mechanics and the fantasy inside the player’s head is what makes video games believable, interesting, and compelling!
Part of working on a game with an IP as large as Harry Potter meant conserving the image and perception of the in-game lore. Needing to work within the canonical restraints of Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery was challenging, but a great design space to develop in!
While I enjoyed my time on the Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery team, the project itself was developing my skills for cinematography and film. Small opportunities to design specific encounters revealed to me how much I love creating scenarios where the player’s experience is made by their own choices. To me, one of the greatest things about games is the interactivity in which the player engages in, which I found at my next opportunity!