WHY CHOOSE ME

I have what you need 😀

Matched Vision

I have the passion and long-term commitment to achieve my goal of helping people understand themselves better :)

Slices of Shadows - Designer & Programmer (2025.08)
This is a screen-click game based on the theme of GMTK Game Jam 2025 - Loop. I hope to touch people like me.

• Different Narrators: Not only the avatar, props and other versions of "you" are also the narrator, to deliver messages from different perspective.
• Different Narrative Methods with A Same Goal: No matter it is direct methods with twists (be hunted - neutral - chase back)  or indirect ways with metaphors (all the narrators are a slice of you), all the messages delivered are trying to reveal the deep, hidden nature part of you.

Simulator of the meaning of life - Designer (2022.11 - 2024.02)
To help people answer "What is the meaning of life?" I created this demo to ask 11 unavoidable questions in life.

• Personalized answer: choose from the given answers or write your thoughts; it all depends on you.
• Philosophical Reference: answers refer to one of the philosophers' thoughts. "What you are thinking may be answered thousands years ago".
• Meaningful Summary: Everyone is unique and undefinable. But I hope the summary can hint at the unlit path.

Emotional Game Design System, EGDS - Creator (2024.04 - )
Inspired by Jenova Chen, I am creating this to deconstruct emotional experiences and hoping to shed light on how to design them structurally.

• Clear Top-down Experiences Hierarchies: Emotional curve -> emotional experiences -> subjective feelings -> objective reasons -> design levers (narrative/ gameplay & challenges/ aesthetics).
• Practical Design Levers with Consensus: By analysing and deconstructing shared objective reasons for subjective feelings from different references, I hope to provide useful design levers to help create memorable emotional experiences.

Keep Learning - Lifelong Learner (2021.07 - )
Game development is a complex engineering problem, which is a perfect playground for a lifelong learner like me :)

• Input: Games deliver messages through experiences, which could be enriched by playing, reading, watching, thinking, or just simply living.
• Output:  Ever since I plan to join game industry, I keep posting  notes, showcase, analysis, and thinking on games almost weekly on my blog.

Reliable Expertise

Experiences across co-dev AAA titles, small team, and solo projects strengthen different skills of mine.

Stable Collaborations & Delivers

Game Designer - Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora  - Ubisoft Shanghai (2022.09 - now)

• BOSS Fight Design
  • Actively take the ownership to architect the fight from concept to final implementation, guiding players through a compelling four-act narrative structure with a shooting puzzle. Defined the boss behavior and combat pattern to enable a thrilling experience with good pacing.
• Level Design & Environmental Storytelling (Thanator & Aerial Predator Territories)
  • Level Design: Designed and owned the level layouts, combat pacing, and environmental storytelling for 18 unique predator territories (6 Thanators, 12 Aerial Predators) across the main game and two DLCs.
  • Environmental Storytelling: Crafted rich environmental narratives by orchestrating props, VFX, and textures to communicate predator brutality and the ecological impact of the RDA, enhancing world immersion and emergent storytelling.
  • Puzzle Design: Used planimals to create a "lock & key" puzzle for a precious resource. Also crafted a brutal narrative of "humans employ noise to expel mothers in order to hunt". Player can help animal to regain sanity by destroying all sonic drones with weapon or solving puzzle.
• Quest & Encounter Design
  • Zakru Painting: Elevated a standard encounter into a 4-part exploration quest, designing the core interaction loop for NPC under different conditions, and embedding narrative hints into NPC & item descriptions to encourage exploration.
  • Legendary Creature Skill: Drove the design and implementation of a new mesmerizing skill to reverse player's control if staring for too long, leading cross-functional reviews with Programming, UI/UX, and Audio teams to refine the mechanic, status effects, and player feedback.
  • Environmental Challenge: Used environmental ingredients to make each legendary wildlife's characteristics shine (introduce sound-sensitive animals into noise-prone environments; deploy the charge-proficient animals in environments densely populated with explosives and thorns).
  • Contextual Storytelling: Tweak the DLC2 encounter spawning to create a story arc (No RDA - wildlife live happily; RDA invade - same type of wildlife fight with each other; Invade more - different types of wildlife fight; Max invade - weak wildlife try to fight epic wildlife for space).
• Systems & Performance Optimization (Wildlife Spawning)
  • Maximize Encounter Rate: Implemented a predictable spawning system, making sure player can meet maximum wildlife within limitation.
  • Optimize Spawn System: Achieved a 300%+ performance increase in the wildlife spawning system by optimizing validation logic. This critical optimization significantly reduced iteration cycles, enabling more rapid prototyping and polishing of wildlife spawning.
  • Spawning Validation Pipeline: Authored a comprehensive validation pipeline to analyze and verify wildlife distribution data, improving the efficiency and accuracy of detecting potential design and technical issues.

Iterative Mindset From Playtest

I have the iterative mindset shaped from the process of playtest (set goals, design accordingly, watch playtest, draw conclusion, iterate). Click to check my methodology on How To Run A Good Playtest.

Global Perspective on Production & Collaboration

I have grown a global perspective on production & collaboration when owning features. Click to check my thought on How to Implement a Feature From A to Z Together with ALL Job Families.

Solid Comprehensive Capabilities

Experiences from both academic and game industry enables me to be a team player and think rationally.

Cross-Functional Team player
Experiences from a cross-country co-dev AAA game development team enable me to think from an global perspective. Owning different scale of features also enables me to put myself into different shoes and think from various job families' perspective.

Rational Thinking & Reasoning
Over four-years of academic training enables me to think in a rational way, which also strengthen my deconstruction ability on experiences.

WHY JOIN YOU

You have what I am Interested :)

Touched by "The Alters"

• Identity Paradox: Who am I, and who are you? Partially shared experiences and different decisions leads to different versions of me. I never regret, but it is very interesting to see and think the results of "what if".
• "Know" Yourself In Advance: Being familiar with all different life paths gives me the full visibility of who they are and what shaped them. This is a vital mechanic that drives all the decisions.
• Control or Under-control: You may think you are the boss, but everyone matters. You may think you can handle the situation, but nature will crash you in seconds. You may think you have the card to negotiate, but all the things may have a destiny from the beginning. Those sparked experiences are charming.

Meaningful Entertainment

A good movie is a good story well told. I believe a good game is a good story worth experiencing. 
I tried to find the word for describing what means for a good game: memorable narrative, enjoyable gameplay & challenge, and pleasant aesthetics. Thanks to you, I found the elegant saying for a good game - meaningful entertainment.

WHO AM I

What Does Game Mean to Me

As a powerful multi-modal media, game has the potential to deliver messages in a welcomed way. I hope player can enjoy when playing, and keep thinking after played - to care about those unavoidable questions: who am I, why should I live, what am I living for...

My Vision

Inspired by Carl Jung, I hope to create chance for people like me to understand themselves better. Check the light of my life for details.

My Goal

I am creating games and relevant content to deliver messages obviously or hiddenly.

My Method

I am building and practicing Emotional Game Design System (EGDS) to deconstruct emotional feelings and experiences, and summarize practical design levers for creating dedicated emotional feelings. I am trying to create memorable emotional experiences with it. Hope this could also benefit game industry.