Phenomenology

My work on Phenomenology included designing two levels of the experimental experience which played with the phenomenology of light and proprioception in Unity. Learning about the vision of my creative director, Richard Lemarchand (Associate Professor at USC and lead/ co-lead game designer on Uncharted 1, 2 and 3 by Naughty Dog) and how this project was inspired by the Light and Space movement got me interested in the works of James Turrell and Olafur Eliasson. The sound design for one of the levels was inspired by Olafur Eliasson’s work, Waterfall, which explored the phenomenology of time and distance with falling water. The design of the level was also inspired by his work, The weather project from 2005.

Richard taught me a everything I know about level design, and his direct mentorship and supervision allowed me to understand how to craft a natural flow to the levels. Under his guidance, I helped develop prototypes for the overture, as well as for the weather and drone scenes. After inputs and playtests, the changes were finalized!

We wanted Phenomenology to be accessible to a vast variety of players from all over the world. For this, I worked on a subtitle system making the game accessible in 35 languages.

This system was used to plug in user-translated subtitles and show it at the right times in the game.

I also led the student dev teams in preparing audio assets and code for the different levels in the game. Working across the design, engineering and marketing teams, I helped establish production roadmaps to meet the vision of our creative director, Richard, in time.