Game Design & Production
Systems • Narrative • Puzzle Design • UX •
Level Design • Production Leadership
I design thoughtful, player-centered experiences and work tirelessly to help teams deliver them with peace of mind, efficiency, and joy. I thrive at the intersection of creativity and execution, shaping mechanics, stories, and worlds while coordinating multidisciplinary workflows to make them ultimately real for players.
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My work spans educational games, commercial titles, simulation systems, and narrative interactive fiction. I’ve led small and large teams, implemented full gameplay systems by myself (when needed), designed expansive production pipelines, and shipped polished experiences across multiple genres.
At my core, I’m a generalist game designer and indie-level game producer specializing in systems design, narrative structure, puzzle mechanics, and cross-disciplinary team leadership (I've worn all the hats, so I speak all the languages). I love to design games that blend emotional resonance with tight mechanics and clarity of play. My background includes everything from games journalism, social media management, leading production for indie titles, designing campaigns, and building and shipping game systems for EdTech and commercial games clients.
Below are selected case studies highlighting my work across all these aspects: level design, narrative systems, puzzle development, and even prototype-driven development (both digital and analog). Read on or click a link to jump ahead.
FEATURED PROJECTS
CASE STUDY 1
Developer • Designer • Producer • Lead Writer
Project Summary
A narrative-driven, 90-minute point-and-click adventure teaching middle schoolers about scientific inquiry and viruses through interactive puzzles, branching dialogue, and character-driven storytelling.
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My Role
I handled nearly everything except art and animation.
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Full game design & narrative
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Scripting, puzzle logic, and all in-engine implementation
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Production planning & cross-team coordination
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Asset integration
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Writing much of the in-game dialog and story beats
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UX flow exploration progression
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Demoing to executive leadership
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Design Goals
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Create a full game in Unity in 4 months (end to end)
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Make scientific inquiry feel like an adventure
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Use humor and character to deliver educational content
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Create puzzles that reinforce real-world STEM concepts
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Showcase that learning can be gamified​
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Game Design Highlights
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Designed 7+ interactive scenes with layered hotspot logic
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Built branching dialog trees with consequence-based outcomes
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Wrote thousands of lines of character dialog
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Created all systems for inventory, clue progression, and character states
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Implemented all scenes and interactions in engine
Awards
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Silver Award at the 2020 Serious Play Conference
Play It!
I've always wanted to make a point-and-click adventure game, so I taught myself how to do it over a weekend, created a prototype, and then presented to my company that we should make one. Somehow they said yes, and I was given the full assistance of graphic artists, illustrators, and animators for 4 months to make this a reality.
I had never made a game before, and so obviously had never used Unity before. And yet here it is.
Please ignore the fullscreen button in the corner, as it won't work on this website!
Elizabeth Hollingshead,
formerly StrongMind
"Grant cares about the big picture in gaming just as much as the minute details, and he was passionate about everything from the home-screen navigation, to the sound design, to the little animations of characters' hair feeling as immersive as possible. His tireless work resulted in a full-feeling, living, breathing world that was as fun to play in as it was to look at and listen to."
CASE STUDY 2
Level, Gameplay, & Narrative Designer
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Project Summary
Designed a full 4-mission "tutorial" campaign with complete narrative arc using previously designed (but not fully dressed) maps and minimal character backstories. Built multi-step quests, event logic, and dialog for each level. Fully implemented, tested, and refined in-engine (Unity) using custom game tools.
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My Role
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Created elaborate backstories for existing characters
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Wrote all branching dialog for the campaign
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Designed multi-layered quests, objectives, and puzzle flows, scaffolding new concepts to gradually introduce players to new abilities
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Implemented every mission in-engine
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Balanced difficulty and pacing​
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Design Goals
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Take a game designed for user-generated content and create best-in-class examples that showcase what is possible in the engine. Push it to its limits.
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Use previously created levels (with no story and often minimally dressed), and "find the fun" inside them without reinventing the wheel.
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Showcase British humor despite the fact that I am not British.
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Demonstrate complex branching dialogue and multiple paths for puzzle solution.
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Make it not feel like a tutorial, but enjoyable to replay.
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Game Design Highlights
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Created nearly 4.5 hours of content from scratch.
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Built fail states, conditional logic, and character-triggered events
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Pushed the developers to craft new tools for myself and future users to be able to make any object be able to do anything.
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Designed escalating gameplay loops, including with character switching and puzzles that relied on multiple characters to complete.
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Ensured each map supported several unique story paths and side content.
Dominic Lennon, Games Global,
Skybagel, and ex-Rare
"Grant excelled in his role as a level designer, consistently delivering high-quality and innovative designs that significantly enhanced our game. He came up with novel ideas in our level editor that allowed him to create things that we didn't even consider possible. Along with this, he recognized a need in the narrative department and seamlessly took on additional responsibilities, demonstrating exceptional versatility and dedication. His sense of humor and positive attitude made working with him a joy. Grant's contributions were invaluable, and he proved to be an outstanding team player and a pleasure to work with."
CASE STUDY 3
Creative Director • Producer • Narrative Designer
Project Summary
An emotionally driven narrative sci-fi fairy tale puzzle game exploring layered psychological states through stylized realism, color theory, and perspective shifts. Currently in preproduction.
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My Role
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Creative direction and story ownership
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Built branching narrative prototypes in ArcWeave
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Production planning across art, animation, programming, and narrative
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Puzzle design tied to emotional “layers” of the character and corresponding states of the world as the player experiences it
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Audio co-direction, composing, and writing
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Design Goals
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​Create a three-tiered story (like layers in a fairy tale) with three distinct endings, depending on how deep down the rabbit hole you go
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Provide a twist on traditional Metroidvania power-building and classic adventure character switching to create new ways of approaching and solving puzzles
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Harken back to yesteryear's point-and-click adventures but truly bring them a modern and surprising feel
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Game Design Highlights
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Minimalist UI but without minimalizing decisions and possibilities (i.e., overreliance on contextual interactions).
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A visual sense of the world that brings a new twist on seeing it through "rose-colored glasses"
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Solving the problem of tiresome backtracking in a relatively compact game world
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​​Production Leadership
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Ran weekly cross-discipline reviews
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Built the entire milestone plan for preproduction
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Coordinated pipelines across 9 other team members
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Integrated early prototypes into Unity, ArcWeave, and Lovable (purely for prototyping)
Example of ArcWeave Scripting and Output
Play a Prototype!
Because our team is small, we use tools like Lovable to make quick playtests of early ideas before building them in-engine in Unity.
Below is an example (which I'm sure you can easily break) of testing out switching between emotional states and how that changes the actions you have available to you.
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In TBD, you have four core actions, but they are altered depending on your emotional state. They largely fall into the categories of sensory, communication, touch, and "special."
CASE STUDY 4
Systems Designer • Writer • UX • Producer​
Project Summary
A replayable (and easily repurposable) city-building simulation where players balance population, wildlife conservation, budgeting, zoning, and green initiatives.
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My Role
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Designed core systems (economy, zoning, conservation mechanics)
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Built UX mockups in Balsamiq
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Wrote tutorial flow and building descriptions
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Researched real-world statistics and implemented balancing passes
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Produced team workflow and milestone timelines
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Design Goals
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​Create a "Sim City"-like that is quickly understandable and fun to play
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For failure to not feel punitive, but present a desire to play again to do better
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To feel like a complete play experience in as little as 15 minutes
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Game Design Highlights
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Randomized map generator for infinite replayability
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Building upgrade system tied to environmental impact
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Dynamic budget forecasting and resource management
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Clear user feedback loops for sustainable development
Early Mockup in Basalmiq
Play It!
This particular version of the game (we created several) was designed for high school biology students, and it was the most complex.
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Players have a lot to manage: their budget, the environment, the population, the city management's requirements, energy and pollution, and particularly here wildlife conservation.
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The goal was to provide all the play information up front (which can be daunting), but support quick-enough play that they can fail and try again, easily learning where they went wrong. The goal was for 15- to 30-minute play sessions.
CASE STUDY 5
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Level Designer • Puzzle Designer​
Project Summary
Drunken Clan commissioned me to design a complete 4-room escape experience set inside an art museum. The challenge was to create puzzles that were accessible to a broad audience while still offering layered logic, satisfying discoveries, and multi-step problem-solving associated with modern escape rooms. The puzzle flows needed to be self-guiding, intuitive, and fail-safe, while still preserving depth for seasoned players.
I delivered a fully designed, documented, test-ready escape experience.
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My Role
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Concepted all rooms, puzzle flows, and logical gating
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Designed props, systems, and narrative connective tissue
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Ensured puzzles followed a clean escalation curve
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Built documentation for fabrication (I was not told if it was ever used, unfortunately)​
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Design Goals
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​Each room should be based on a different puzzle mechanism: pattern recognition, spatial manipulation, multi-object sequence logic, and more.
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As much as possible, the puzzles should make use of physical objects in the room: paintings, sculptures, museum artifacts, and room fixtures.
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Game Design Highlights
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This was my first time designing abstract puzzles from scratch, and they all were primed for testing, although I was never shown any implementation.
CASE STUDY 6
Narrative Designer • Writer • Puzzle Designer
Project Summary
Another commission from Drunken Clan, here I created a prototype level for an emotional narrative game where the player packs up a rock musician’s apartment before catching a bus to meet with a studio exec about their big break. Interacting with each object in your apartment unlocks memories (good and bad), branching dialog, and multiple endings.
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My Role
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Designed entire apartment layout and objects to interact with
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Wrote emotional backstory anchored by physical artifacts, each tied to one of multiple intersecting personal "buckets"
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Design Goals
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​Create multiple buckets tied to a concept of "emotional weight"
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Create a timed aspect, meaning you can't interact with everything
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Balance between relationships, purpose, and emotional baggage​
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A layout of the main character's apartment, its rooms, and where the items can be found. Players would be walking around a 3D space during real-world gameplay.
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Game Design Highlights
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Created and wrote various interaction dialog for 50+ items
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Depending on what was packed, you could reach one of 15 endings.
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Voice-consistent writing reflecting grief, hope, and identity
Read It!
CASE STUDY 7
Board Game Systems Designer • Writer • Rules
Project Summary
A theme-park design card game with 725,000+ possible attraction combinations, pitched to Gamelyn Games in 2013. Note that this is NOT the game released years after us by the same name in 2019 (which I own and support!).
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My Role
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Co-designed core mechanics & attraction combos
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Built Excel simulation to test balance across permutations
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Produced mockups for rules, cards, and player flows
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Playtested extensively
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Co-developed the pitch package
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Design Goals
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Replayability driven by modular combo system
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Holistic balancing using spreadsheets and iterative testing
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Focus on drafting, synergy, and creative strategy
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Game Design Highlights
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No two games ever feel the same due to the sheer number of combos possible, as well as the shifting Design Trend and Theme Trend cards, which make themes and attraction types more or less popular at any given time.
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Has a party game vibe with the attraction naming (some people tended to play fun-sounding attractions even if they weren't worth as many points) mixed with crunchy min-maxing.
ADDITIONAL CLIENTS & PARTNERS
Test It!
Because our system allowed for well over 700,000 attraction combinations, we built a variety of mechanisms in Excel to allow us to rapidly test things.
We have a fully playable version of the game in Excel (who says Microsoft Office can't be fun?!), but for simplicity's sake, you can click in the window here, press Control + R to refresh, and see a variety of themed attractions spawn before your very eyes.
Our goal was to make every combination sound at least relatively good and have nothing that would be considered not family-friendly. Did we succeed? You decide!
J. GARCIA
WORLDGAME ENTERTAINMENT
Impartial
Scenario Design Consultation
Untitled RPG
ZELOS AND FABIEN
Nox City
C. BURMAN
Altar
Tori McCoy
Wires Crossed
General Game Design Strategy Consultation
Story, Scene, and Puzzle Design Consultation
Tabletop RPG Template Design
Level and Puzzle Design Consultation