Hey there to the beautiful human reading this!
I'm Closs and my pronouns are they/themI'm a UK based Level and Feature Designer working remotely from Cheshire.
I have 8 years experience in the industry;
3 in Customer Support and 5 as a multi-discipline Designer.I put 100% into everything I do and strive to create fun and
exciting experiences that people from all walks of life can enjoy!Accessibility is one of my top priorities when designing, as I believe everyone,
no matter the skillset, should be able to enjoy games!When I'm not playing or making games, you can find me baking
all sorts of sweet cakes and cookies, sewing or crafting for cosplay,
badly painting dragon minis or getting up to mischief in a
number of ongoing D&D campaigns
Golf Clash
EA and Playdemic's BAFTA award winning free to play mobile game! Tee off against players worldwide in online shootouts!
Guardian Trials
Top 5 in the PAX 2020 'Dungeons & Dragons: Design-a-Dungeon' contest. Built in Core Engine.
Pathfinder
A week long personal project built in UE4 on an 'Intro to Game Making' course with Code Coven.
Pokémon Fangame
A new personal project to expand on my Level Design skillset and get to grips with the RPG Maker XP Engine.
Golf Clash
2017 - present
I'm currently working for one of EA's mobile game studios; Playdemic. I work on their BAFTA Award winning Mobile Game; Golf Clash, which has grown to become EA's most profitable mobile game studios to date.Working on Golf Clash includes creation and documentation, from concept to release (and beyond!), of game mechanics, features and level design.My feature work includes QoL and accessibility changes, fair-play measures and player retention features to keep the game fun and fair for all players while encouraging them to keep playing.My Level design work involves crafting playable course block outs in 3DS Max of Golf Clash Original courses that are inspired by countries and their cities all over the globe.I have also replicated a number of world famous courses in partnership with the PGA itself. So far I have made; Quail Hollow, Sawgrass, St Andrews, Pebble Beach and East Lake. With EA's connections guiding the way, I'm sure there will be opportunities for many more to come.Above are examples of just a small handful of original courses that I have released based on locations in China and South Korea.
Guardian Trials
2020 - 3 week project
The Guardian Trials was a short, multiplayer, open world RPG adventure created in the Core engine. I initially spent 3 weeks learning how to use this engine and created this project as an entry for the PAX 2020 "Dungeons & Dragons: Design-a-Dungeon" contest under the category "The Wilderness". It placed in the top 5 of its category and was featured on the Panel of Legends show at PAX.I was initially provided with a simple grey dungeon block out template, some pre made weapons, armour and lootable items, as well as a basic combat and level up system. I deviated hugely from the original provisions, crafting my own custom weapons and expanding on the provided loot and level up systems. I then built an expansive outdoor world to explore, placing all NPC's, objects and décor by hand, down to every tree, rock, flower, and patch of grass.Using premade assets from the in-engine store, and with some guidance from the community, I was able to use the LUA-based visual coding features to create; fast travel points, a questing system, story and NPC interactions including a working travelling trader to aid players on their journey by way of providing weapons for sale.Many of the interactable elements of this project made use of trigger points and boxes to utilise enemy spawning, alongside sound and special effects to make the experience more immersive.The world featured three main biomes; the Elemental Shrines of Thera, Eci and Ifre (Earth, Ice and Fire) with enemies and bosses specifically themed to suit each biome.
Pathfinder
2022 - 1 week proof of concept
Pathfinder is a 3D open world platformer built in UE4 that focuses on adventure and exploration. Jump, Climb, Glide and Swim your way through a beautifully crafted world, uncovering its secrets and collecting trinkets along the way. There’s no incorrect way to explore, as the world is built to be tackled in multiple ways, depending entirely on which skill crystals you find first.This was my first personal project I had to undertake during my Code Coven 'Intro to Game Making in Unreal' course. I had 1 week to create a proof of concept.Due to this time frame, I took a prebuilt scene and assets from the Epic Games store and combined these, alongside using UE's terrain and foliage painting tools to suit my needs. I also placed additional objects that I had created from scratch (using shapes and textures that I also changed to suit what was needed) to act as 'Skill Crystals'My main focus for the week was on creating flows using UE's Blueprint system. Having never written a line of code before, this was a daunting task. However I was successfully able to make working title and pause menus, create interactable crystals which would trigger story text and, my biggest achievement, interactable items that would disappear from the environment when picked up by the player.These were my Trinkets! Getting close to a trinket would trigger an overworld message that would rotate itself to face the player no matter where in the world they were standing. This message would prompt the player to press the interact button and add the trinket to their collection.My success on this project gave me the confidence to develop my Blueprinting skills further and explore pop up story text UI attached to collectible objects. I went on to use this during a group collaboration that myself and classmates worked on for our final project of the course.
Pokémon Fan Game
2024 - Ongoing
Pokémon Purple (working title) is a passion project I started at the beginning of January 2024. Still very much a work in progress as I learn the ins and outs of RPG Maker XP. As I work full time I can only dedicate a few hours, once a weekend at best to this project.So far I have created the starting town (name TBD, but I'm thinking Berrygrove Town), Route 01 and a forest route which will take players to a grove entrance where they'll have a chance encounter with their starter Pokémon!Getting these initial areas to feel right was of high importance, so I took great care in designing each aspect, even down to the spacing of each tile, to ensure the areas felt full of life and lived in without becoming overly cramped and tight spaced.Route 01 was especially important to nail. Giving players a choice between taking a longer winding path to avoid wild encounters, or risk it running through the grass tiles, feels very authentic to the traditional Pokémon experience. I also wanted to make sure that a shortcut back through the route was available to speed up time taken to return to the home town to continue the story.I have also begun dabbling with RPG Makers 'event' system, having created a few interactable elements; signs, NPC's and collectible hidden items. I've also filled my Route 01 with a number of wild Pokémon encounters in both the grass and water, giving each encounter type a dedicated probability rate and a range of levels for each Pokémon that are apprpriate for a new trainer setting off on their adventures!The plan is to eventually flesh this out into a full 8 gym game with a mysterious story! I'll be uploading playable builds as and when I am happy with the quality and polish of the content.