TIANHAO XU
About Me
ONE PAGE, JUST SCROLL
Estimated reading time: 15min
Hi! I'm Jay (Tianhao Xu), a Game Designer, Indie Game Developer, and Interface Designer from China. I published my first game on Steam last year and have two internship experiences in game company as a game designer. I am currently doing my master's degree at Michigan State University, Game Design major (Media and Information).
PROFESSIONAL PROJECTS
NISHUIHAN Mobile
Intern Game Level Designer at NetEase / Zhurong studio, working on AAA MMORPG game 逆水寒
PERSONAL GAMES
No Way Back
Complete
·Unique Gameplays Combining TPS with Parkour
·Meaningful mechanisms and puzzles around the core concept of "can ‘t stop"
Detective Puzzle
Demo
·New Narrative Combining Photography and Sound
·Outerwilds Narrative Structure and Puzzle Solving which is centred in exploration
Chron
Demo
·New Puzzle Mechanics About Temporal Regression and Level Design Built Around the Core Mechanics
Square Road
Demo
·New Strategy Game Mechanics that Combines Rougelike and Cards Build.
What I did in
NISHUIHAN
I am responsible for configuring and designing the level, mainly work on the OpenWorld exploration, design puzzle, and implementations of missions.
Aqueducts Puzzles
One of the tasks I was assigned was to design a puzzle level about aqueducts. Players need to raise, lower or rotate the aqueduct so that the water from the higher level flows to the designated location.
Tutorial Level
The tutorial level is very simple, teaching the player how the puzzles work.
Variant 1
Intersecting aqueducts that motivate the player to rethink. Increasing the depth and playfulness of the puzzles.
Variant 2
Form follows function. The water should flow from both sides at the same time for this situation, so I modify the script. Motivating the player rethink it again and learn this feature.
How I design
NOWAYBACK
This project originated from a small prototype where the character moves forward on their own and needs to kill enemies to accelerate and jump on the platform. The core experience is the joy and excitement that is too fast to control.
MEANINGFUL CHOICES
"A game is a series of interesting decisions"
—— Sid Meier
Killing every enemy you see without hesitation is not always fun, so what if players need to choose to kill or "use" the enemy?
Of course, players can kill enemies to gain acceleration, but they can also gain momentum by approaching them and being boxed by them, flying to places they usually cannot reach.
UNITY IN
DESIGN
“By using repetition with design elements such as components or symbolic colors, the user becomes better at identifying what they mean each time they see them, thus reducing cognitive load.”
—— Theories of Interface Design
In the prototype boss battle, players who enter the boss's red circle will die directly. The player's feedback in playtest is
"WHY?!! No one told me or hinted me about that!"
OR we can use the same attack method, but the boss's attack power is greater, allowing players to fly further and die by flying out of this circular level. Players need to walk on the inner side to avoid being knocked off the platforms.
The level and Mechanics in
Detective Puzzle
So far
The game is at a very conceptual stage
Player wake up on a research vessel in the Arctic Ocean that is about to go down, and deduces the truth through a camera that can see into parallel time and space.
Unity's probuilder allows me to quickly prototype levels, help with level design, iteration, and even do some simple modeling.
Referring to Outerwilds' translated dialog, Obradinn's replay of the moment of death, I hope to design a new narrative. So I thought of ViewFinder, a recent puzzle game, with Unheard, a previous game that used sound to solve puzzles, and designed a narrative that combines photography and sound.
Updated on October 2 with new scenarios and mechanics, related mechanics are still in the iterative stage.
For example, some parts of the scene will be seen differently with the eye than with a camera. As in the picture, the camera can see a pathway to climb to a new place.
How I design
CHRON
This idea was originally came up for the test of MIHOYO's level designer. MIHOYO didn't took it, but I still thought it was an interesting idea.
THINK
AGAIN
"Doubletake puzzles" subverting expectations of players and push them to recontextualize the same environment and thinking from "Vertical Thinking" to "Lateral Thinking".
—— Mental Check Point
Players have learned the "interaction" and "return" mechanisms in previous levels.
When player see a door closing, player will instinctively try to run through it with your ”Shadow“ because it's faster than Character walking. However, player will realize that it's useless because character will "return" to the origin position. It forces you to rethink the environment and the mechanisms and change your idea.
I've designed some new mechanics around this and designed some really cool levels
How I design
SQUARE ROAD
On the battle board, directional control buttons and attack/be attacked symbols from the card library are randomly generated on the board. Players need to use the directional controls to change the actions of the squirrel to defeat the enemies.
EXPECTED
EXPERIENCE
“Lens #1:The Lens of Essential Experience
To use this lens, you stop thinking about your game and start thinking about the experience of the player. Ask yourself these questions:
What experience do I want the player to have?”
—— The Art of Game Design
Take a reference from Vampire Survivor.
Design a gameplay where players can easily create situations: where players dramatically outperform the strength of the enemy with sound strategy and card builds. Players will get a massive sense of accomplishment and exhilaration from this moment.
Players need to think about the optimal solution among several possibilities in different directions on a randomly generated board. During the build process, while the enemies get stronger, the player's possibilities of making LOOPs in some randomized situations grows.
When a player makes a LOOP and deals a lot of damage to an enemy, I created expected experience that the player get a massive sense of accomplishment.
By the way, I'm working on a super cool puzzle game about gravity, but I can't show it due to space constraints. I have a lot more ideas, demos and skills and look forward to sharing them with you sometime!
More Information on this：