Laura DeCarli's Portfolio
Other Creative Work
While in my previous projects I've mainly took the roles of game designer, UX designer, QA and project manager, I've also participated as audio editor and art director whoever the team lacked one or the other (or both). My amateur-level audio and image editing skills allow me to find and edit most assets needed for smaller projects, and my creative sensibility and organization allow me to create cohesive artistic guidelines when the team lacks a professional for the role.
Amateur Audio Editing
Bulb's Escape (2023)
About Bulb's Escape:
Bulb’s Escape is a 3D platformer where the player plays the role of a mischievous lab-made electric creature named Bulb: they'll steal the gravity boots and use them to reach the surveillance cameras, destroy them and escape the lab.
The project has been developed by a team of students, WATT?!! Playhouse Production, as part of the Making Games course from the MSc in Games of the IT University of Copenhagen.
The current beta version is the one that we have handed in for our exam: the player can play around the lab and enact Bulb's grand escape plan.
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The player ump with Bulb's base jump or with the Gravity Boots' Gears.
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The player can recharge the Gravity Boots by interacting with the Lamps.
- The player can Pickup and Push Interactable Objects.
- The player can destroy the Surveillance Cameras by interacting with them.
What did I do for this project as audio designer?
In addition to my main role as Game Design Lead, I also worked on the project as Gameplay Designer, Puzzle Designer, Level Designer and Audio Designer.
With regards to the audio design role, I took care of searching for and editing the in-game sound effects, background ambience and background music needed to give feedback to the player in-game and in the menus, as well as to create and a sound scape that complemented the game's narrative an art. The trickiest, but also most fun sound effects to find and edit have been the ones related to the player character: they're a cartoonish light-bulb shaped creatures, so I used many metallic and cartoon sounds for their movement and interactions with the world.
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From this experience, I've learned a lot about audio editing for videogames, and while I'm not a professional audio designer I find it to be an enjoyable part of game design. I also had the change to follow Ronny Mikkelsen's Game Audio Workshop while working on this project, where I learned audio editing basics and worked with both Audacity and FMOD.
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In addition to editing the sound themselves, I clearly documented for the team how we would use the individual files and kept track of the licenses under which the files were available.
WATT?!! Playhouse Production:
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Producer:
Thim Daniel Hansen
Game Design Lead:
Laura DeCarli
User Experience Lead:
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Technical Lead:
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Game Programmers:
Amateur 2D Pixel Art Sprites
Goldash (2022)
About Goldash:
Goldash is an endless runner mobile game created by Qizue Team for DBGA's online courses in Game Design and Game Programming.
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The player plays the role of Trasher, a cleaner robot tasked with collecting the trash under the city of Goldash.
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During the run, the player has to jump to navigate the environment and to defeat hostile robots.
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However, jumping too much can cause Trasher to overheat, and eventually and explode if they don't cool down by releasing energy by falling on enemies or with ice cubes.
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They can also pick up consumable power-ups that will help them in their run, which can be upgraded through the in-game shops by spending the gears gained from collecting the trash.
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In addition to collecting the trash, the player can also complete various achievements and gain more gears in addition to character skins to personalize Trasher.
What did I do for this project as art director?
I took charge of the art direction of Goldash so that there would be aesthetic cohesion between the sprites created by the other two game designers, Michele and Sebastiano, and myself. Since no-one in our team is a professional visual artist, we decided to find a set of environmental assets in a pixel art style that would be accessible for us to create simple sprite in for all other assets. In the art guidelines I included clear indication for the style, color palette and visual language used to communicate key information to the player. I also made various sprites for the game, either on my own or in collaboration with Sebastiano.
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I also participated in this project as game designer, gameplay designer, user experience designer, QA and project manager.
About Goldash's sprites:
In order to have an art style as consistent as possible, Qizue Team decided to base any homemade sprite on the spriteset used for the environments (16x16 Industrial Tileset by 0x72).
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I created a reference Art Guidelines document for the team, created a few sprites, re-colored and slightly adjusted the design of sprites made by the other designers and created the animations for the enemies.
Qizue Team:
Game Programmer:
Game Designers:
Sprites I made for Goldash:
Sprites I co-created with Sebastiano Clon:
Emotes I added to Cristian Ghiorzi's sprite of the player character:
Some first small steps and experiments
Flyover Camera Cinematic in Unity (2023)
Learning to use Unity's Terrain Tools and Cinemachine:
This is a flyovercamera cinematic I made for DBGA Online Blended’s course in Game Design Level 3. I started learning to use:
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Unity's Terrain Tools to create an outdoor level,
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Cinemachine to create a cinematic with a flyover camera that shows the level and key locations.
Simple Interactions in Unreal (2023)
Learning to create simple interactions in Unreal 4:
These are some little experiments I made to learn how to create simple interactions in Unreal Engine 4 for DBGA's Online Blended course in Game Design Level 3. I decided to:
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make a small indoor scene with diegetic lighting and pictures on the walls (using decals),
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create some simple interactions with the level for the player (opening/closing doors, turning music tracks on/off to mix them, read some pieces of paper, and be damaged by fire),
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and add UI and HUD elements.
Prototype: Ball Maze Over the Edge (2022)
Creating a prototype and learning to use Unity:
This is a little prototype I made for DBGA Online Blended’s course in Game Design Level 1.
The objective of the assignment was to start learning how to use Unity Engine by re-creating a base prototype from a tutorial and then improve on it by correcting errors, enhancing it however we wanted, and adding a new mechanic, as long as the player’s shape remained that of a sphere.
About Ball Maze Over the Edge:
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I decided to create a game about pushing objects that bounce around when they hit a wall, and to change the aesthetics of the game.
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The player's objective is to push all the little spheres into the void before the time runs out.
Future developments?
It would be interesting to create a game with more levels, to have levels that develop downwards, to play around with physics a bit more, and to add a leaderboard of the players’ scores.
Prototype: Roomba Witch (2022)
Creating another prototype in Unity:
This is another small prototype I made for DBGA Online Blended’s course in Game Design Level 2. The base game was in 3D endless runner, that we could enhance however we wanted, and I choose to experiment with creating a game in 2D and to play around with an idea that was discarded during an ideation session with Qizue Team.
About Roomba Witch:
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The player can control two player-objects: a Witch who can jump and her flying Roomba that can be moved up and down.
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The player's objective is to collect as much mail as possible, and to avoid being pushed off the Roomba by the obstacles.
Future developments?
This prototype isn’t particularly polished, because I didn’t have a lot of time to work on it, but it was fun to make and I wouldn’t mind expanding on it (example: giving abilities to the witch, adding animations, sprites for the obstacles and an actual background, creating a more varied level design, etc.).
Pitch Document: Cuddlefish Adventure (2022)
About Cuddlefish Adventure:
This is a Pitch Doocument I made for an educational single-mechanic mobile game about discovering the sealife playing as a little stubby squid.
Future developments?
This is a game I would actually be interested to prototype!