Deen Grey
Game and narrative designer
Projects
S T A R C H E O L O G I S TRIT obtained a grant from NASA to engineer a way to do balance testing while in space. To demonstrate this the team before me built a game. I altered the existing levels and designed a new one to present at the Johnson space center.
U N W E L C O M E
V I S I T O R S4 person team working for a year to turn a school project into a showable demo. I worked as the project manager to plan for taking the game further into production, as well as writing the narrative.
C H A N G E L I N G
V RA professor lead summer internship on a virtual reality game. Fantasy puzzle game focused on world building and explorative new VR mechanics. I worked as the narrative designer to continue world building and concretely define the characters.
A B O U THello and welcome! I am Deen Grey, a game and narrative designer with a BS from Rochester institute of technology in Game Design and Development with an immersion in Creative Writing. I have been coding projects since I was 15 years old and making games with those skills since 16. This website is home to a few of those projects I am most proud of contributing to. I grew up watching my brother play games like Skyrim and Bioshock. I fell in love with these games because the mechanics were easy to understand even when someone else was holding the controller, and the storylines made me want him to keep playing so I could explore those worlds and connect with the characters.
My goal is to contribute to games that give the player satisfying mechanical feedback as well as emotional storylines. I think the future of games will expand the definition of play and incorporate deeper artistic interpretations as well as bleed into the more mechanical aspects of life. I want to work with the stories that are being brought to a whole new level through player interaction.
C O N T A C TFeel free to contact me at any time, be it job offers, project questions, dog names, or if you're just in town and need to know the best coffee shop!
360-434-7073
[email protected]
Starcheologist
This internship was incredibly fulfilling. I got to work with a team of 12 other people from many different backgrounds, including engineers and neuroscientists. I worked closest with the 4 other game designers. We used unity and oculus to develop the game for the "rig" that the engineers were building.What we received at the start of the semester was 2 barely developed levels that while technically working, were not much fun to play. I focused on the development of a 3rd level to flow with the first two but move in a new direction.
I started with a sketch of what the level could look like, and decided it would be more fun and have more interest for astronauts if it were procedurally generated. After gray boxing it and making sure it worked, a team member and I started putting in assets to make it pop.
Following a review we started adding in distractions for the player and making sure the level was cohesive with any updates the rest of the team was making in previous levels.
By the end of the 3 months we presented to a small team at the Johnson Space center, and even had a few trainers attempt the game. I am proud to say that they found it helpful and fun.RIT students devise a way to help NASA astronauts return to Earth’s gravity
Multidisciplinary student team demonstrates astronaut training device at NASA’s Johnson Space Center
Unwelcome visitors
Unwelcome visitors started as a class project and gladly expanded into a year long passion project for me and 3 other students to work on. We took the semester following the class to secure supervision, an artist, and credit for internships.
I worked as the narrative designer and production manager for team. To my team this mean I was in control of the story of the game as well as informing the level designer what elements make sense in the levels to create the puzzles. For the first level for example there was a father and son living together with hobbies around cooking, video games, and exercise. The level designer took this information and made ways for the player to attack the characters using cook ware and falling weights.
Our stretch goal for the project was to publish something to steam, or at least have a nice portfolio piece to show off. This meant that I took lead as production manager and was able to look into the legal and financial side of game development. Before we took time off for the school year I had a Kickstarter planned out with budgets and timelines for backers to keep track of our goals.
changeling vr
Changeling was the first big project I ever worked on. The game is about an urban fantasy world where a detective who can see peoples memories by touching them is hired to find out what is wrong with a baby. As it turns out the baby has been taken by fairies and replaced with a changeling.
I am listed as a programmer on this game for my work on a few smaller aspects of game play. My favorite one being the canvas that the player can paint on with different colors using a paint brush available in the level.
However my main work was as the narrative designer helping to build out the world in the onboarding level. I fledged out the background and history of the world and communicated that to the player through environmental clues and dialogue.
https://www.changelingvr.com/
trolly trauma
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