Closs Birkett [They/Them]

PROJECTS

ABOUT ME

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Hi there! I'm Closs, my pronouns are they/them. I'm a UK based Level and Game Designer working remotely from Cheshire.I have 8+ years' experience in the games industry with 5+ as a multi-discipline Designer; tackling gameplay features and LiveOps, but specialising primarily in Level Design.I'm passionate and driven to craft exciting, enticing levels and worlds that players from all walks of life can enjoy. I keep diversity, inclusivity, accessibility, and a player-first mindset at the heart of everything I create. I believe that everyone, no matter the skillset or experience, should be able to enjoy games!Much of what I’ve learned about game design has come through self-teaching while working from home, driven by curiosity, persistence, and a genuine love for the craft. There isn't any software or skill I can't pick up and master when I set my mind and heart to the task.When I'm not playing, streaming or making games, you can find me baking all sorts of sweet cakes and cookies, sewing or crafting for cosplay, painting dragon miniatures or getting up to mischief in a number of ongoing D&D campaigns.

GOLF CLASH - Playdemic | Electronic Arts

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• PROFESSIONAL
• LEVEL DESIGN
• FEATURE DESIGN
• LIVEOPS
• MOBILE

GOLF CLASH OVERVIEW

WHAT IS GOLF CLASH?

Golf Clash is a free-to-play, multiplayer mobile game where players compete in golf matches against opponents from around the world in real-time. The game features a variety of courses, club upgrades, and game modes, including 1v1 battles in tour play, tournaments, and solo play options.

TOUR PLAY

Tour Matches have a coin cost to enter for each player, and the winner takes the pot, earning an additional prize chest containing clubcards, balls and other prizes that can be used to unlock and level up gear to use in future matches.Players winning a tour match also earn Trophies, which unlock more challenging tours, as well as contribute to their public trophy score, showcasing to other players their skill.Each tour goes through a Course Rotation every season, switching up the courses that can be found in each tour to keep gameplay fresh and exciting.

TOURNAMENTS

In Tournaments players compete for the lowest score and climb the tournament leaderboard in order to earn a huge pool of rewards, the size of which dependant on their finishing position. Tournaments are split up into different difficulty levels and skill sub-tiers, each with their own cost to enter.Tournaments also sometimes feature modifiers that put a spin on the challenge in some way; be it steady or strong winds, an alternate pin position or increased rewards.

EQUIPMENT & PLAYER SKILL

Golf Clash has an immense array of golf clubs for players to choose from, ranging from low power and high accuracy or vice versa, long or short ball guides, top spin, back spin and curl.There is also a huge catalogue of golf balls, each with their own unique stats as well!Club's stats are varied by their rarity and club level. It's up to players win matches and earn prize chests containing clubcards, which they can use alongside a coin cost to level up their clubs!

THE DESIGN PROCESS

USER CENTRED & ITERATIVE DESIGN

In order to design great courses that are fun for everyone, I need to take everything mentioned above and more into consideration. Tour and Tournament play, club and ball variables, alongside the vast array of player skillsets, wants and needs, needs to be kept at the core of consideration during the design process. Whether it's a players first match in Tour 1, or they are years into the game playing a Master Tournament, it's important to ensure that everyone can have fun on the course!

Designing courses relies heavily on repeated playtesting and iteration to make sure the holes feel fun to play! This step is imperative to ensuring a hole’s success and I spent countless hours, not only perfecting my skills as a master player, but also ensuring I never lost sight of how it feels to be a new rookie with little to no knowledge of the game.Playtesting frequently during the design process ensured that any areas of a hole that didn't feel right were immediately found and fixed, leading to fewer gameplay related bugs at the QA stage and a more enjoyable level to players overall.

1. RESEARCH

ORIGINAL & LICENCED COURSES

Golf Clash's (GC's) huge library of levels is divided into Original Fantasy Courses, and Licenced Real World Courses, the latter officially licenced in partnership with the Professional Golf Association (PGA).Designing Original courses means a lot of work in the pre-production phase with the Art and Design teams to come up with a unique theme, location and key hazard types. We fill out a Miro mood board with research and themes to align both teams on the brief.For example, a links (coastal) course would feature flatter yet rugged shorelines, lots of sand (bunkers) and water hazards with exposure to high winds. It would play very differently to a greener park landscape with undulating terrain and curving (dogleg) fairways sheltered from the wind by forests of trees.Similar accommodations need to be accounted for with Licenced courses, but since the location, themes and hazards are predetermined, the design challenge comes from researching and replicating the real world hole as accurately as possible, while also keeping the gameplay exciting on what end up usually being simple layouts, built for more realistic real world golfer skills (there's no wind reduction or reduced needle speed stats in real life!)This often means having to make subtle changes to the shapes and sizes of various parts of the course; large enough to make a difference in a players approach based on the equipment they're using, but not so large that the course becomes unrecognisable from its real world counterpart.

2. CONCEPT & DESIGN

With the research to hand, the next stage involves blocking out individual holes for a course using Adobe Photoshop and Autodesk 3DS Max. This part of the process varies slightly depending on whether I am designing for an Original course or a Licenced one, but ultimately follow similar steps.Using dedicated colour channels, all the parts of a course are painted out, creating the fairways, hazards and greens of each hole, carefully created to meet both the brief and the needs of the players.This image file is combined with a model plane in 3DS Max, where elevation and undulation is added for additional gameplay challenges. Trees and other hazards, as well as the pin and tee's for each hole are also added at this stage.

3. ITERATION & PLAYTESTING

Once an initial design has been fleshed out, the files are exported to our game engine and built into playable levels for playtesting.Playtesting happens for all 3 tee positions, and with a large number of different club loadouts, each specially made to mimic the most frequently used clubs for each skill tier of player.This means when designing and playtesting, I'm doing so with every skill tier of player in mind at the same time. If at any point, a particular shot doesn't play well, feel challenging enough or simply isn't fun, I go back to Photoshop and Max to reiterate the design, re-export and build the level again for further testing. This makes up the largest portion of the design process.During this stage, playtesting is also offered to wider disciplines in the studio and external community contractors for additional feedback. I collate feedback in forms and then use this to further iterate the level from these unique points of view.

EXAMPLE | LICENCED COURSE DESIGN

EXAMPLE | ORIGINAL COURSE DESIGN

Designing an Original course is the same as a Licenced course from a pipeline perspective; Textures are painted in Photoshop to create fairways, greens and hazards. Undulation is added in Max directly, then these scenes are exported into the game engine for playtesting and further iterations...

Even on seemingly simple holes, I ensured that there were multiple routes a player could take at every skill level, both high and low in risk vs reward, gated by obstacles and designed with the games wind system in mind so that players can take safe, longer routes for a surefire par or birdie, or risk a tricky, overpowered shot to get closer to the pin and land a more impressive score.

HOLE BREAKDOWN EXAMPLES

GALLERY

Here is just a small number of some of my favourite designs from a range of different courses;
both Original Fantasy Courses and Licenced PGA Courses.

DESIGN STUDIES

| COMING SOON |

CV