In order to complete my education, I joined Gamabilis for a 6-month graduation internship, which was followed by a contract during the first weeks of 2019. This start-up focuses on "Games for Change", a type of serious games that pushes players to question their habits and the way they live, to initiate global changes toward a better future. However, since the company is still young and have to make a living, it also develops more traditional serious games following a business-to-business model.
In order to complete my education, I joined Gamabilis for a 6-month graduation internship, which was followed by a contract during the first weeks of 2019. This start-up focuses on "Games for Change", a type of serious games that pushes players to question their habits and the way they live, to initiate global changes toward a better future. However, since the company is still young and have to make a living, it also develops more traditional serious games following a business-to-business model.
Romain Trésarrieu
Game Designer
INTERNSHIP AT TURBO TAPE GAMES
​(Internship | June - Sept. 2017)
Tactical | 1-2 players | PC
Engine: Unity
Role: Game Designer
No illustration due to unannounced project
During 2017's summer holidays I moved for about 3 months to Norway, joining the indie studio Turbo Tape Games in Bergen as their Game Design Intern. Back then, the team was thinking about developing their new game that went by the codename Einherjar and wanted to have a proof of concept for late September.
Einherjar is a tactical game set in North Mythology, with a gameplay inspired from the studio's previous games (such as UHR: Warlords or The Astonishing). The studio has not revealed anything more regarding the game, thus no more information will be given about it for now.
As the only Game Designer of the team, I had to execute several tasks. Some of them were mandated by the team, others were from my own will:
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System Design: the team already had a first prototype of the game when I joined them. However, we determined that most of the system had to be revised and simplified, so we rebooted it. We started by making a paper prototype for quick iteration, then worked on a digital version to get closer to the final experience.
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Prototype testing: bug-tracking in the digital prototype, experience new gameplay elements...
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Benchmark and analysis: finding games sharing commons points with our, thinking about how they could be improved, watching how their developers dealt with problems we experienced, taking inspiration from them...
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Documenting about Norse Mythology: reading about the myths, understanding notions from a foreign culture, listing about 400 different characters for potential game units...
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Design tools: establishing a methodology for creating different playstyles depending on factions, creating auto-updating spreadsheets for unit design and balancing... so the team could continue working on them after I was gone.
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Units & spells design: using the tools I had conceived, I created about 50 different units and spells that appeared in the proof of concept, based on their faction's playstyle.
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User Interface design: digitally drawing mock-ups for the in-game interface, explaining how the player could interact with it and how it would change depending on the action...
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Design document redaction: writing and keeping up-to-date Confluence pages such as Game Design Document, Terminology document... in case anybody in the team or joining the team had questions about the project.
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Chapters sorting: the game's campaign is split into chapters based on Norse myths, so I made a first version of the order they would follow, deciding which ones would be bonuses chapters...
Since the team let me manage my work the way I intended, I came up with my own way of dealing with a single long-term project. This mostly translated into "active procrastination" (switching to another task when you have been working on one for too long, so you can keeping focusing on what you have to do and do not get tired of your work) and creating tools that would made work simpler. I also always kept in mind that I would have to leave the team by the end of the internship, so I always made my work public so they could use it even after my departure.