Nick Browning’s Portfolio
Professional Game Designer, UCLA Graduate
Thank you for visiting my site!
As a game designer and computer science graduate, I’m focused on providing unique experiences to players, leveraging both my design experience and technical expertise.
During my time at college, I interned both as a software engineer at Clear Guide Medical, and as a Designer at Riot Games. I returned to Riot after I graduated, where I worked there for 6 months.
Professional Experience
Tournament of Souls, League of Legends
Tournament of Souls was a limited time in-client metagame players could play during our Soul Fighter event.
Players controlled Samira, fighting enemy bosses in quick, 90 second battles with a combat system based on 2D fighting games.
As part of the wider League of Legends experience, players first needed to complete in-game missions to earn “reputation”, which allowed them to fighter harder and harder bosses in our experience.
I worked on this project in the discovery phase (during my internship), and then during the end of production and the QA phase, when I rejoined Riot after my college graduation.
Personal Contributions:
Discovery Phase:
– Explored the technical feasibility of using Unity as our engine for the project, in order to allow for faster design iteration and increase performance in-client.
– Designed initial game ideas with a team of 3 other designers, focusing on creating a game that can easily meet product goals, run smoothly within our technical limitations, and provide an experience that matches our event theme.
Production Phase:
– Fixed approximately 30 bugs in multiple different systems, including animation bugs, UI/UX bugs, and bugs in our core game systems.
– Designed the “Expert” mode for 3 Bosses (Jhin, Lux, and Sett), meant to be a more difficult version of those fights for our more engaged and hardcore audience.
– Reworked the Jhin fight to add extra punch to his 4th shot, and remove random elements, in order to better represent his sociopathic serial killer personality through play.
– Reworked the Sett fight to start with his ultimate, and other powerful moves, in order to better represent his aggressive and in your face personality through play.
Below are youtube clips of players beating the 3 fights I worked on.
Jinx Fixes Everything, League of Legends
After working on Tournament of Souls, I worked on the Arcane season 2 metagame, Jinx Fixes Everything.
I worked on the pitching phase, discovery phase, and part of the pre-production phase.
Personal Contributions:
Pitching Phase:
– Designed and presented multiple pitches for future metagames based on leadership criteria and theme of the corresponding event, including pitches on games in the puzzle genre, strategy genre, and action genre.|
– Developed custom Unity tools for other designers and partner teams, in order to increase team efficiency and bypass technical restrictions
Discovery Phase:
– Supported both In-House and Outsourced Art teams, ensuring 3D assets were up to the technical standards for the project and directly implementing them into prototypes.
– Implemented and fine tuned first person camera controls and movement for our prototypes.
Pre-Production Phase:
– Collaborated with Art and Narrative in order to create a world guide and develop a clear player journey through a 20 minute experience.
– Designed and drafted two levels, focusing on adapting existing spaces created for other purposes to meet our needs.
– Created paper designs and flow charts to effectively communicate concepts to other members of my team.
Personal Project Experience
Pokemon Wanderers, Demo
Pokemon Wanderers was a fan project made in Unity during the summer of my freshman year of college.
Wanderers was meant to be an open world version of a pokemon game. However I was only able to finish the tutorial
and the first area.
The player explored a small open area, trying to find and catch all 12 different pokemon while also talking to npcs and completing small quests for them.
Personal Contributions:
Battle System:
– Recreated the mechanics of pokemon battles in Unity.
– Coded a turn based battle system that allowed players to either attack, switch to a different pokemon, use a pokeball, or run from the fight.
– Implemented over 100 unique moves, each with a unique type, damage power, and battle effect.
– Designed 20 unique pokemon, some based on existing pokemon and some completely unique, each with their own stats, typing, passive ability, and move set.
Level Design:
– Designed a large over-world forest meant to encourage open exploration and allow players to discover interesting pokemon and items at their own pace.
– Created two areas in the corner of the map with scripted content, the first being a unique encounter with a rare and powerful pokemon, the second being a research station with npcs and a quest-line. Players are lead to these areas with the two main paths.
Here is a link to a playable version of the demo.
https://nbrowning.itch.io/pokemon-wanderers-demo
Game Jam Projects
Below are a few of my best projects developed during game jams.
While these projects are small in scope, due to the small time frame they were created under, they showcase my design ingenuity and ability to develop in multiple different genres.
To see my other game jam projects, check out my itch.io page:
https://nbrowning.itch.io/
Drunk Wizard
(Bullet Heaven)
This game was made with the
theme of 10 seconds. This lead to a
design where the player character
got a new move every 10 seconds.
Players control a powerful wizard in a bullet heaven game, with the goal of surviving as long as they can against a horde of increasing enemies.
Whenever they use one of their three moves, it gets replaced ten seconds later with a random one.
The link to the project is below:
https://nbrowning.itch.io/drunk-wizard
Deliver Us To Evil
(2D Platformer)
This game was made with the
theme of delivery. This lead to a
design where the player works to deliver an evil to the world.
Players must run away from a monster that constantly chases them through a non-linear level.
As they find and gather flames in the level, they unlock new abilities to more easily escape the monster and collect more flames.
The link to the project is below:
https://nbrowning.itch.io/deliverustoevil
Deli Designer
Nick Browning's Portfolio 