Portfolio
is my name, I am a Game Designer graduated from the University of Arts Utrecht. The way Game and Level Design is applied inspires me to create my own concepts. Through the years at the university I created a new love, a love for board games.
During my study I experienced that I also like physical work, like woodworking and construction work. These different ways of design helps and makes me a versatile designer.
The Promised Land is a User Experience build around the fall of the Berlin Wall. The purpose of the experience was to evoke a feeling of empathy and loneliness. During your journey inside, you are confronted with question you were able to answer. With the use of a UV torch, messages were appearing around you.
During this project I was responsible for the construction, design choices and typography.
Hue & me is an ambilight that responds to the pixels on your screen. The project was about creating a tangible working prototype that interacts with it's user or with another system.
This project was made possible by the Universaty of Arts Utrecht in collaboration with the Holland Open Air Museum. We were able to design a concept and create a prototype focused on child labor in the Netherlands around 1874. Kindustrie is a game where a group of players will have to create a family and need to survive the Industrial Revolution. The game is played within the museum park, during your visit you will encounter events that affect your family.
Ghost from Bungie's Destiny made in Adobe Illustrator
Head of a robot inspired by the robots showed in Neon Genesis Evangelion, made in Adobe Illustrator.
Effection is een proof of concept, een concept die wij als team moesten bedenken rondom een ethische kwestie.Effection is a proof of concept. We created a concept which focuses on interaction between parent and child. In this case it uses a interactive book.
This was a 3D modeling assignment where we had to create a 3D aircraft. Model, Unwrap and Texture the model in Autodesk Maya.
A close friend of mine started to stream on Twitch and was in need of some branding and overlays for his stream. Since I enjoy making logos I decided to help him out.
The theme during the 2016 Global Game Jam was rituals, our ritual was adjusting the settings of your new bought game to your liking. How high do you want the volume to be, what difficulty do you want to play on, brightness level and many more.
The images below are a few of the Level Designs I created during the Game Jam.
The game is playable with your keyboard or a Dualshock 4 controller. Keyboard: Left arrow: Move character to the left. Right arrow: Move character to the right. Spacebar: Jump Z: Attack Dualshock 4 controller: L3: Makes the character move left and right. X: Jump. O: Attack.
These are logos and or brandings I created for personal use.
This is the board game I designed for my admission to the University of Arts Utrecht. Avant Garde is a two player strategy board game played on the unfoldable board. The objective is to capture the opponent's queen. The game is played with a set of colored step cards which corresponds to the colors on the board.
During the concept phase I wanted the game to be easy to carry during your travels. The solution I came up with was a board that folds into the box itself.
The picture below shows the process of the board layout. In this process I was playing with the location of the moves the players could make.
On the board are locations where the players must draw an Event Card and resolve what the card reads.
Fashion Club is a mobile dress-up game that was developed by BoosterMedia. During my internship there, I had the opportunity to be able to create content for this game. Due to the game being a dress-up game, there was alot of content to be created. Down here you see some of the outfits and accessories I created.
To create diversity and be able to recreate yourself, we had to create alot of different facial features.
In the game there also was a photo shoot function in which you could take a picture and share them with your friends. For these photoshoots we had to create locations where these shoots would take place.
The Living Lab Applied Game Jam is an incubator for applied games while providing a platform for intercultural exchange through game development. During the Jam we had the opportunity to work with Korean students. The sponsor/parntner for this Game Jam was Transmango. The subject we had to tackle during the Game Jam was Future Food.
At the start of the Game Jam we had to choose which roles we would like to fulfil, one of my choices was being a producer. All the producers were asked to come forward and select their teams. During this phase of the jam I was deliberately about my picks. I made sure that I had at least one developer, one artist and one designer, but I also wanted to collaborate with a Korean student. To get to know new people and to learn about their culture.
After all the teams were assembled it was time to do research on the theme and problem we had to solve. Our question was: How can a game help explore the combined challenges of food and nutritional insecurity on the one hand and the need for sustainable food systems on the other?
That was a lot of information for us to take in, so we simplified the question. Which let to the following question: How are we going to feed the world in the future without destroying her.
On the final day it was time for the sponsor and experts to play and judge our game. Throughout the Jam we had a lot of positive feedback from the experts and other students around us, but the most satisfying moment was when people were playing the game and to see their response. My team and I were really proud of what we have accomplished within 48 hours of developing.
After the Game Jam ended, we had to say goodbye to our new friend Kim Byung In. For the rest of the team and I, we continued to iterate on this design and make it better then it was at that point.
Tiny Towns is an interactive floor game in a god-like perspective. You can interact with the turnip-like creatures. When you put down your feet on the floor, the creatures will gather around your feet and will start to build a society. As the player you are able to sit back, relax and watch what the creatures will do or you are able to destroy the buildings they have created.
One of the aspects we had to meet was that the concept of the game should be inspired from a public area or be able to be played there. The concept that became Tiny Towns, was inspired by this curved bench. We noticed that no one was sitting there and we wanted to lure people with our interactive floor.
Our artists came up with these plant-like creatures, which eventually resulted in our turnip-like creatures called Knöllen.
For the Knöllen I designed different parameters and characteristics that showed in which stage the Knöl was. For example, if a Knöl contained more than 80% water in his/her body, a flower would sprout out of there bulb.
Unfortunately we were not able to create a trailer for our game, so here are some gifs of some students playing Tiny Towns.
Corn'ered is a project that was a continuation of the game we created during the Living Lab Game Jam 2017. We had a solid foundation to work from, but we still decided to go back to the drawing board. To redefine our design, gameplay and graphics. One of the first things we wanted to change was the chicken, we needed a bigger impact with the character. Eventually we changed the chicken into a little piggy. Because of this decision we needed to change the gameplay as well, because as you might know, pigs don't lay eggs.
FUN, was one of the major elements we focused on. This is why we wanted to playtest as early as possible, to see where we had to improve our design — gameplay wise and visually.
It was clear off the bat that the camera needed some work and that alot of people did not understand the goal and meaning behind the game. We were aware of the camera issues, but not that the message did not come across the audience. Afterwards we immediately started working on those refinements.
If I look back on what we've accomplished and where we came from, I am proud to show this project to the world. In my opinion it has a cool visual style and it is fun to play.
We got some positive feedback from Dr. Joost Vervoort, who represented Transmango during the Living Lab Applied Game Jam 2017. Both his response and that people were constantly playing the game was very rewarding for me.
Heroes Never Die is a fast and strategic card game in which it is the goal to overcome Evil with Good. To win the game you have to make sure to do this better than your opponents. The video above will show you how the game works together with a preview of a play session I did with other classmates. This video is in Dutch.
Zoos is a Gear VR experience I worked on during a seminar. In Zoos you are a god who is able to move planets in and outside of Virtual Reality. In combination with Unity3D, MoCap and Isadora we were able to create this experience.
What I really enjoyed about this project was that we were experimenting with all the soft- and hardware. That after a few changes within the build, we were able to playtest right away and iterate on what was working and what not.
Marigold is a game in which you end up in the underworld, where you are reunited with your father. Unfortunately for Latigo, there is not much left of him — just his skull and spine.
Down in the underworld there is a tree that is holding up the world of the living. On each big branch there is a small city with a certain theme to it. In the Marigold prototype you are exploring Lujuria, the city of lust.
Latigo is the Core Mechanic in Marigold. We wanted to design a mechanic that served multiple purposes simultaneously. With Latigo you are able to use him for movement and combat. Meaning you can use him to fight off evil forces and manoeuvre through the environment by swinging and using the grappling hook to get on higher objectives.
For level design we were inspired by Double Fine's approach. We started of with determining the Unreal Units we were going to use within the level blockout. The width and height of the buildings, the gaps between them and how high our character is able to jump. After all of this was finalized, we started working on the level blockout. Building interessting ways to steer the player in the direction you want. If the world is going to be an interesting environment, then the gameplay will have to be all about exploring this environment. This became our design philosophy during the project, finding and designing different ways to encourage the feeling of exploration through gameplay. Some of the techniques we used were NPCs, quests, collectables, cutscenes and techniques like lighting, composition etc.
In previous projects it was always a bit hard to find my place within the team. It has occured that I had to assist the team as Artist, Producer or even Developer. During this project this was not the case, I was able to completely focus on the role as Game Designer. We got the time to research different aspects for the design of the game. How we wanted the camera to work and how other platformers utilized their camera, the definition of exploration and level design techniques. For this project I was given the role as Lead Game Designer, which in my opinion was not needed and that is all because of the Game Designer I worked with. We were mostly on the same page and he needed no supervision.
Niels van Unen - Producer
Cairan Steverink - Lead Developer
Justus Sluijter - Lead Game Art & Concept Art
Herman Wegter - Game Design & Level Design
Vasilis Kelempekis - Sound Designer
Sascha de Waal - Game Developer
Sandor Daemen - Game Developer
Yannick Seyeux - Animator
Björn Dingeldein - 3D Environment Artist
Gwen Bergers - Concept Art & 3D Modeling
Liad Damhuis - Concept Art & 3D Modeling
Youri Hoek - 3D Environment Artist
Always wondered what happens behind the scenes at Google? At Google Backstage you and your team take on the role of Google. Help their users from A to B, find answers to their questions, make recommendations for the best videos — and find out what Google does with your data. Are you and your team able to place a high score?
Google Backstage is free to play after registration, and available to you from 15 november 2017 to 6 february 2018.
https://events.withgoogle.com/googlebackstage/Don't bargain with faeries, definitely not if they're the ones to get you in trouble in the first place.
Orphic is the ultimate reading experience on smart-devices packed into a game. A game of observing and talking to people. A game where your choices have impact on the course of the narrative.
For the design of the game we focused on:
• Dialogue Decisions
• Mystery
• Immersion
We like to call Orphic a Graphic Adventure, but you could also fit the game into the Visual Novel genre of video games. It's story is a dark fantasy, where the core is about trust, where tarot foreshadows future events inside this narrative.
• Dialogue decisions
• Observation mechanic
• Tarot
The player's input is mostly tapping the screen to get further into the story, pick dialogue options and when you are able to observe a character, you search the character by holding the screen.
Gwen Bergers - Art Director & Art
Ilse Bigler - Art & 3D Modeling
Michael Ottink - Development
RSVP is a digital platform created for the professorship Interactive Narrative Design at the HKU in which they are able to create narratives about migrants.
The professorship Interactive Narrative Design researches tools to communicate, discuss and comprehend complexity, as a meaning-making practice for the 21st century.
Show the complexity behind integration and socialization of migrants in the Netherlands through a interactive narrative.
For research purposes we went to talks about refugees and/or migrants and visited the Humanity House. Inside this museum you embark on a journey and see, hear and experience personally what it must feel like to have to survive in an area affected by conflict or disaster. You're not just an observer, but a participant.
Timothy Schelhaas - Narrative & Game Designer
Ruben Bimmel - Development
Ermis Chalkiadakis - Development
