Dose of Decay
Part of my Senior Collaborative Game Development module at the University of Staffordshire. As a team, we pitched the idea of a first-person shooter, where the enemies the player fights are always bosses. The player is introduced to a tutorial section that shows them the ropes of the game, before they fight their first boss.
Role
Project Lead
Lead Game Designer
Team Size
Collaborative Module @ University of Staffordshire
5 Game Designers
6 Technical Designers / Programmers
5 Hard Surface Artists
4 Concept Artists
1 Animator
1 Visual Effects Artists
Time Frame
March 2024 - May 2024
Genre
First Person Shooter
Boss Rush
Software
Unreal Engine 5.2.1
GitHub
Jira
Google Docs
Adobe Photoshop
Microsoft Teams
Summary of Constributions
Project Lead
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Collaborated with Game Designers, 3D Artists, Concept Artists, Technical Designers, and Programmers to make sure each department met their weekly sprint tasks on Jira.
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Managed the Jira weekly sprint and created and assigned new tasks.
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Corresponded with Lecturers (Acting as Directors) to tell them what the project status was, and where we were in production.
Lead Game Designer
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Managed a small team of Game Designers, assigned tasks that covered gameplay mechanics, level design, and the game systems.
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Made minor tweaks to existing game mechanics to hone them in with the game theme and time frame.
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Created and documented work within the Game Design Document.
UX/UI Design
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Designed low-fidelity wireframes in Adobe Photoshop for the Main Menu, Settings, and HUD (Heads Up Display).
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Passed on the wireframes to a Technical UI Designer to be implemented into the Engine.
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Iterated changes verbally on the spot.
UX Wireframes
As part of my contribution to the game's development when I wasn't performing the duties as the Project Lead. I helped create some simple UX wireframes for a few different areas of the game.
Post-Mortem
As a vertical slice of the intended game we set off to develop, this meant we had to cut down on features that we desired to have within the game. We ideally wanted the player to experience at least a minimum of two boss fights to get an overall view of the game, however with the time situation we had to cut it down to 1 boss, which was originally intended to be used as the tutorialisation boss.
Also experiencing the role of leadership for the Game Design team, and for the entire project. I felt that even though I didn't contribute much physically to the project through design diagrams, I provided a lot of verbal feedback between my team, and to the Technical Designers/Programmers and the combined Art team. I also spent most of my time assigning tasks on Jira and updating the weekly sprints.
Getting this experience to create a project of this scale, is something that has truely benefited me as a designer and also contributed a lot towards my leadership skills. If I could change one thing about the project, it would be redoing the UX wireframes to make the game much more distinquishable and understandable as some of the feedback we recieved as a group was related to the healthbar for the player and the boss.
Awarded "Best Team Project" by Game Bridge in July 2025
Since the project was submitted to the University in May 2024. Almost a year later from Graduating, our teams animator for Dose of Decay was planning on submitting his work to Game Bridge, but as he wasn't allowed to submit animation work due to there not being a category for that, he asked the team if he could submit our project under the "Team Project category", which resulted in us getting 1st place at Game Bridge 2025.
UX Wireframes
Remastered [September 2025]
Using my skills that I've gained since this project was finished, I decided to use this project as a case study to further enhance my UX Design skills.
The idea behind these UX wireframes were to keep them in loop with the gameplay, and attach them to the narrative of the game. I also wanted to incorporate some of the ideas that we had to scrap from the game.