Laura DeCarli's Portfolio
Gameplay Design
My main area of interest as a game designer is gameplay design: everything that is about creating game mechanics, the interaction between players, the players and the gameworld and the game system’s response to the players’ actions is interesting to me.
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I’ve started my journey as a practicing gameplay designer by focusing on the basics with Goldash (2022), a platforming endless runner, then explored player vs player gameplay with Pumpking! (2022), puzzle games with Icy Lake (2023), 3D platforming with Bulb’s Escape (2023) and currently (2025) I’m working on a two players couch co-op game with my Master’s thesis team.
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While digital game design has been the main focus of my studies, I’ve also started to become more and more interested in the design of analogue boardgames and cardgames. I’ve created a prototype for a PvE with procedurally generated labyrinth, Dicey Labyrinth (2022), and a tarot inspired card game, Tarot Hallow (2024). I’ve also experimented with creating mods of existing games, by developing a yathzee mod for the boargame Labyrinth and a color-blind mod for Sagrada.
Current Project
Working Title: Co-op Thesis Game
About our thesis project:
We are writing our Master's thesis on game design processes and methodologies, and to test out our process we decided to create a 3D two-players couch co-op game.
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The player characters are two very specialized wizards: one can use magic to pull objects towards them while the other can push them away. They need to work together and coordinate their magic to solve puzzles and opening paths within a castle.
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We have completed the prototyping phase and are now in the process of completing the hand-in version for our thesis, but have plans to further polish and expand the game after our studies.
What did I do for this project as gameplay designer?
As lead gameplay designer, I've worked on the project through every stage:
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Before the ideation phase I've worked with the team to decide what were our goals for the project and to define the game design values for our game.
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During the ideation phase, I've researched similar games and brainstormed pairs of player character abilities according to the design values the team had agreed on. I then discussed with Mikkel, our other gameplay designer, and Hallur, our tech lead, to settle on a game concept to start designing from.
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During the initial design phase I've created templates of how to communicate level design ideas, I've finalized our definitions of the player characters' abilities and game loop and contribute to define the various interactions with the game world.
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During the prototyping phase, I've grayboxed different challenges that we had designed and fine-tuned the player characters' movement and abilities.
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I've also tested the prototyped gameplay design, both on myself and on external playtesters, gathering the data needed to improve the gameplay's design and the players' experience.
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After the prototyping phase, I've analyzed the prototype and the results of the external playtests with the objective of identifying how to polish and improve the cooperative gameplay. We move on from prototyping into the development of the actual game.
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I've also participated in this project in the roles of level designer, UX designer, UI designer and producer.
Co-op thesis team:
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Producer:
Laura DeCarli
Tech Lead:
​Hallur Kristinn Hallsson
Art Lead:
Game Designers:
Videogames & Digital Prototypes
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 gameplay designer?
As Game Design Lead I lead the team through the ideation phase of the initial concept. We started with a divergent ideation session, followed by a convergent ideation session and a vote to choose one of the concepts brainstormed, which I then turned into a Game Concept Document for the team. I worked with the Producer to divide the design work between the members of the Design Team and I made a list of variables that the Design Team would need to fine tune from the editor.
The initial concept prototyped included also puzzles as mini-games to progress through the level, but the idea was scrapped both because of time constraints (scope) and because that prototype lacked a clear focus. As design lead, I lead a discussion for the re-design of the game and then I created a new concept on which we worked to finish the project. We decided to scrap the puzzles and I decided to use the platforming elements of the game as its main focus, because it allowed us to build a complete game around the features that we had already implemented or were in the process of implementing.
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In addition to my main role I also worked on the project as Gameplay Designer, Puzzle Designer, Level Designer and Audio Designer.
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:
Brainstorming drafts for Bulb's Escape's lab's second area's level design:
My level design process for the second area of the lab has been the following:
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I've experimented with the Jump's and Gravity Boots' settings, testing out different distances between obstacles of various heights and with platforming puzzles with the intractable objects.
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Based on the notes I took of these experiments, I drafted examples of maps, each with a top-down view and a height view that showed how the cameras, intractable and lamps could be placed.
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I then selected one version, implemented it in-engine and made adjustments after each test.
Prototype: Icy Lake (2023)
Creating a prototype and learning to use PuzzleScript:
I've created this prototype for the course Making Games as part of ITU's Master's in Games (Design Track).
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The objective of the assignment was to learn how to use PuzzleScript by either creating a game from scratch, modifying another game or creating a low-fi version of another game. I decided to try to re-create a classic cracked-ice mechanic present in old puzzle games like the one in Sootopolis Gym (Pokémon Emerald Version, Game Freak, 2004) and studied the script of Notsnake, another PuzzleScript game.
About Icy Lake:
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The player has to collect all the acorns and bring them to the player character’s tree.
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The player character leaves behind a tail of cracked ice, if they step on the cracked ice they fall into the water.
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The prototype presents three levels for the player to complete.
Future developments?
I don't plan on turning this into a full game, but I might get back to it from time to time if I come up with new levels.
Pumpking! (2022)
About Pumpking!:
Pumpking! is little 2-players Halloween-themed game made for the One Minute Game Jam #8. The two players chase each other around a cornfield in rounds of 30s: in the first round they can choose if they want to start out playing the role of the escapee or of the chaser, while in the second the roles will be swapped. The players can also choose between two playable characters: Pumpkin and Scarecrow, each with their signature ability. The Pumpkin can sprint, while the Scarecrow can push away or pull towards themselves the other player.
What did I do for this project as gameplay designer?
I participated in the project as Game Designer, and I mostly worked on:
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game's ideation,
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fine-tuning of the player characters' abilities
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fine-tuning of the power-ups,
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fine-tuning of the traps.
Pumpking!'s Team:
Game Programmers:
Cristian Ghiorzi, Nicolò Bertoli
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Game Designer:
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3D Artist & Animator:
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Music Composer:
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Sound Designer:
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 gameplay design?
As a gameplay designer I worked on:
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game's ideation,
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project's documentation (pitch, GGD, art guidelines, playtesting doc),
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fine-tuning (of all elements of the gameplay during the run and of the game's economy),
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gathering and analyzing the playtesting data, and adjusting the gameplay design based on what I learned from the playtests.
I also worked on this project as producer, taking care of the team's organizations and task tracking, and as art director.
Qizue Team:
Game Programmer:
Game Designers:
Analog Games Prototypes and Mods
Modding: Colorblind Mod for Sagrada (2025)
Simulation by David Nichols of what Sagrada's color palette would look like to colorblind players.
About Sagrada:
Sagrada (Floodgate Games, 2017) is a competitive puzzle game designed by Daryl Andrews & Adrian Adamescu and illustrated by Peter Wocken. The objective of each player is to create a stained-glass window by placing dice on a puzzle board. Each player receives a private objective and shares three public objectives with the other players. The puzzle boards' difficulty varies, and when receiving a board and choosing a side to play with, each player will receive a corresponding number of favor tokens. The favor tokens can be spent to use Tool cards, or can be kept until the end of the game for additional points.
Sagrada's accessibility issues for colorblind players:
Standard Sagrada is played with dices of five different colors: red, green, blue, purple and yellow. The rules forbid players from placing dices of the same color next to each other vertically and horizontally, puzzle boards have color restrictions for some tiles, and all private objectives as well as some public objectives give more points based on how the players placed dices of different colors. This makes for a very interesting and fun puzzle challenge, but will the way in which red & green and blue & purple can look similar to each other for people with protanopia and deuteranopia, and the same goes for red & purple and green & blue for people with tritanopia. Given that this is a competitive game, a colorblind player having to ask other players what is the color of the dice on the other players' boards could unfairly reveal their strategy.​
About this mod:
Ideally, a mod set out to resolve this issue would replace either red & blue or blue & purple with black & white on both the puzzle boards and the dice to draft from. This would give to all players the same experience of the original game, only with an alternative color palette.
However, my objective with this mod was to make something easy to access without having to buy new material (e.i., new dice of the correct size). So I decided to modify the puzzle boards and objectives to be playable with a color palette reduced to three colors (either red-blue-yellow or green-purple-yellow). The reduced color palette resulted in an increased difficulty, since there is less wiggle room for players who don't plan carefully where to place their dice, so I decided to give players more favor tokens to account for that.
Future developments?
More playtesting is in order to fine-tune the mod's balance.
Why did I make this mod?
Sagrada is a game that I enjoy a lot, and I would like it to be a more hassle-free experience for friends who do not perceive some color differences. After all, with my own very strong short-sightedness, I would not have fun if people asked me to play a game that required me being able to read from a distance without glasses or contacts.
Prototype: Tarot Hallow (2024)
Designing for game balance:
This prototype is a group project made for the course Play Lab as part of ITU's Master's in Games (Design Track). Our task was to create a prototype to learn more about game balance, and we choose to work on a card-game where we had to design and balance abstract game mechanics, rather than balancing values of game objects and mechanics like we already have in other projects.
About Tarot Hallow:
Tarot Hallow is a four-player card-game that uses two decks: the Major Arcana deck and the minor arcana deck. At the start of each round a Major Arcana card is revealed, the players will play face down a minor arcana card from their hand and reveal the card they played after everyone had played theirs. The player who has played the minor arcana card with the highest number gets to add the Major Arcana to their Reading. Each Major Arcana card belongs to one of three categories, Magic, Monster and Shadow, and can only be placed in the corresponding category's slot of their Reading. If a card already occupies a category's slot, the next card of the same category scored will be placed reversed (and the next one upright and so on). While the player(s) who played a court card will use the power of that court card:
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Pages: "Switch a Major Arcna card from one player's Reading (not yours) to another player's Reading (not yours), without changing its position. It has to be in the correct slot."
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Knights: "Give two cards of your choice from your Hand of Fate to another player and take two random ones from their hand."
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Queens: "Change another player's Major Arcana cards' position from upright to reversed, or vice versa."
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Kings: "Change one of your Major Arcana cards' position from reversed to upright, or viceversa."
The game ends when there are no more Major Arcana cards to be scored.
What did I do for this project as gameplay designer?
I participated in the project as Game Designer, and I worked on:
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game's ideation,
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balancing of the card's effects,
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balancing of the card's scores,
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playtesting,
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writing the game's rule book and finalizing the rules.
Future developments?
The prototype needs some refinements to be turned into a proper card game. It would be worth to re-design elements of in response to the feedback received by external playtesters: Major Arcana cards, for example, could play a more important role during the game through special effects.
The Tarot Hallow Team:
Game Design, Game Mechanics Balancing and QA
Emma Buetow Peláez
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Game Art
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Flavor Text
Emma Buetow Peláez
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Scores Balancing
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Rulebook Design
Prototype: Surrealist Tongues (2024)
Designing Playable Media:
I've created this prototype for the course Playable Media as part of ITU's Master's in Games (Design Track). The objective of the exam was to design a prototype for a piece of playable media, with at least a digital component, as part of a critical reflection on a specific theme or design practice.
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The idea behind Surrealist Tongues is inspired by a variant of games such as Consequences and Cadavre Exquis, and by my reflections on playful communication and the concept of language levels.
About Surrealist Tongues:
Surrealist Tongues is a two players game in which the players' objective is to create a story made out of eight sentences, four for one player and the language that they speak and write but the other doesn’t, and four for the other player. Each sentence should answer the following questions:
1st – How do fairytales start in your language?
2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, in any order – Who? What? How? When? Where? Why?
8th – How do fairytales end in your language?
My goals with this prototype were two:
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To explore the idea that not only is possible to play with languages and communication even if the two players have not even started learning each other’s languages yet, but that some types of play are accessible only when the players do not understand the other’s language.
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To make the new languages feel less intimidating to the players.
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​A basic concept of this game can be played by just using the player’s voices and pen and paper. The paper prototype of this game consists of printable cards with the prompts and a space to write in. The digital prototype has been designed as a mobile application meant to be used by two players playing on the same device, similarly to how they would share the prompt-cards in the paper prototype. While the digital prototype at the moment is not fully complete, it is playable as an adaptation of the paper prototype to experience an early version of the game.
Future developments?
The next steps to complete the digital prototype will be:
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Researching how to implement dictation, so that the Input Fields can be filled in by dictating the sentence into the smartphone’s microphone.
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Researching how to implement automatic translation, so that the players can choose if they want to translate their sentences themselves, or if they want to have an automatic translation and eventually correct through edits.
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Researching how to randomize the order of the Middle questions
Prototype: Dicey Labyrinth (2022)
Working from a brief:
I made this paper prototype for DBGA Online Blended’s course in Game Design Level 1. The assignment was to pitch a game for a turn-based PvE game based around a set of dice and power-ups, with Slay the Spire and Yahtzee as inspirations.
About Dicey Labyrinth:
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I created a Pitch Document and a first paper prototype of a game in which 1 up to 4 players have to use dice combos to defeat the guards that keep them trapped in a labyrinth that magically changes its layout.
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The pitch could be used for either a digital game or a board game (or both).
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The boardgame version takes inspiration from the boardgame Labyrinth. The way the labyrinth shifts is determined by rolling the dice.
Future developments?
I would love to test and fine-tune this paper prototype and/or create a digital version of the game based on this pitch.
Modding: Yathzee Mod for Labyrinth (2022)
About this mod:
While working on the Dicey Labyrinth prototype, I also came up with a few rules that I then used it to make Labyrinth a bit more fun for me and my friends.
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At the beginning of their turn, each player can roll the dice to obtain combos like one would do while playing Yathzee. The combo obtained can be used to cast a spell.
How did I create this mod:
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I created a list of spells that players can cast to gain an advantage or to create a disadvantage against the other players in the boardgame Labyrinth.
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Then I assigned the spells to Yathzee combos.
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I tested it with my friends and changed some spells based on their feedback, and now our games of Labyrinth are more competitive.
The Tarot Hallow Team:
Game Design, Game Mechanics Balancing and QA
Emma Buetow Peláez
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Game Art
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Flavor Text
Emma Buetow Peláez
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Scores Balancing
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Rulebook Design