Epic Skater (2011-2016)

Owner, Project Lead, Designer, Producer, UI/UX
Your Daily Fill

Started a company and recruited talent to put together a vertical slice/demo of a 2.5D sidescrolling skateboarding game. Our crowdfunding campaign didn’t meet its fundraising goal, but it got a lot of attention from game developers, publishers, and professional skaters which led to a 3 year partnership/publishing deal with Kongregate (Gamestop) which funded the project until completion.

We set post launch goals and funding to expand on the game’s feature sets, fix bugs, and content updates to maximize average revenue per daily active user. This included new skater outfits, skate decks, perks based on those items, environments/levels, interstitial ad support, rewarded video ad support and holiday-focused content updates.

Recruiting, interviewing, contracting, management
Business Development, pitch documents, demos, interviews, publisher coordination
Documentation, github management, production, scheduling
Direction, Level Design, UI design and placement, screenflow charts, player mechanics specs, goal design specs
Builds and build submissions, TestFlight distribution
Captured and Edited trailers, promotional material, and content for social media

Notable Skills and Software Used:
Unity, 3dsmax, iOS, Android, Unity Cloud Build, Tortoise GIT, Github, iTunes Connect, Google Play dashboard, TestFlight, Asana, Swrve, XCode, WordPress, Adobe Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, Logic, Google Docs, Google Sheets, Mumble, Skype, Google Chat, OBS

Development Screenshots

Mapping out endless level geo for Mines, Hell, and transition areas on paper before trying in 3D

Screenshot of Museum blockout adjustments needed

Concept art of the starting room where the main menu would be and where the skater would start for endless mode

When watching gameplay videos, it was hard to convey how the game controlled without visual feedback, so this was a first test on drawing the start of touch input, then connecting it to end of touch input

Another screenshot of after one of the first art merges of the first level: LA. Taking screenshots of buildings from google street view, then adjusting them to fit what we needed just as temporary placeholders

After one of the first environment art merges to get a proof of concept going for the first level: LA

One of the first functioning prototypes of the first level blocked out with a finish line. No tricks or animation, just a skater moving with a jump mechanic

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2.0.0 New Levels Update: Clouds, Mines, Hell, and blockout Lab tests

Menu Walkthrough (Unity UI)

Screenshots

Epic Skater's Main Menu Screen (taken from the editor). Links to socials, google play , dev panel, offer wall, R/V links, shop, tutorial, records, settings, tap to start are all presented here.

A perks slots machine system was added to encourage more coin sinks and more value within each run. This was later removed due to Google and Apple's rating systems requiring no examples of gambling even though it's all soft currency (not real money).

When the player falls, and chooses not to continue, they are presented with a series of screens depending on where they were in progression, but this End of Run screen will always show. Lots of iterations with art and programming to get to this point.

After the game launched, users demanded more ways to spend money, so we added a skateshop and this submenu to present users with outfits and boards to buy. We didn't want to clutter up the main menu with another "shop" button or confuse the user with "skate shop" and "shop for currency" semantics.

Outfit and Skateboard items added to skateshop for the halloween update

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