Roy Wilmer - Game DesignerRoy Wilmer - Game DesignerBy: ChimpWorks
Role: Game Designer
“Welcome to the long-awaited sequel to the legendary Rider game (150 millions downloads worldwide)! Feast your eyes with brand new 3D graphics, and unleash your riding skills throughout the unique Worlds of Rider Worlds!”
Rider Worlds is the sequel to the popular mobile game Rider and has a very similar gameplay loop. Having you control a bike to trick and flip your way through randomly generated runs using a hold-and-release control scheme.
Having joined the project during early prototyping, I (together with 4 other designers) was responsible for the design of every aspect of the game with a different focus depending on the stage of development. During early development I worked on broad system design, creating a general economy set up and ensuring a good game feel and balance throughout the experience.
Later, during full production, I contributed further to the meta system design and focused mainly on content production. Creating both independent levels (a feature sadly cut from the final game) and level chunks for use in the generation of the endless runs. Creating a smooth workflow from initial level ideation and protoypin, to implementation and iteration thorugh playtesting. This level design work continued post-launch as we worked on creating new gameplay content for players to explore
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“Get ready for some flippin’ action! Perform insane stunts while you cruise through the never-ending world of Rider! Grab your motorcycle and start flipping like a maniac!”
Rider is a simple, yet challenging casual game available for Android and iOS. In it, the player controls a vehicle as they navigate through a randomly sequenced set of levels to try and set a high score.
This game has been live since 2017 and has maintained a sizeable player base since then, recently having reached 150 million total downloads. For around 9 months, starting in 2022, I was responsible for most design related tasks on this project. This included the design and creation of new LiveOps features and systems, as well as providing support during a port of the game from an older engine to the Unity game engine. This meant that I was responsible for many different aspects of design, including gameplay, system, liveops, and level design.
As new features were being tested I was also in charge of keeping an eye on, gathering, and interpreting data through GameAnalytics. This led to a ‘data-inspired’ design process, where qualitative research into competitors was used to inspire new feature designs. These designs were then tested on a small section of the playerbase, after which the quantitative data gathered from that test was used to iterate on the feature to maximise the positive effect of the feature on the game.
By: Wouter van Vugt, Pavel Stoimenov, Roy Wilmer
Role: Game Designer, Sound Designer
“Princess Paladin, a dungeon crawler where you are the companion!”
Created for the GMTK game Jam 2023 (and featured in the top 20 out of 5000 submissions in the “Best Games of the Jam” video), Princess Paladin is a game in which the player fills the role of the companion instead of the hero as your princess works their way through endless enemies. You are in charge of supplying the princess with weapons and health, managing the resources of health and durability to try and keep both yourself and the princess alive as long as possible.
I was mostly in charge of general game design and planning at the start of the jam. Switching to creating and implementing sound and music as time progressed, also supporting both art and programming through UI and control implementation, allowing them to focus on more core aspects their craft.
Itch.io link:
“The continent of Aurelion is one of plenty. The land provides an abundance of materials and fertile soil for the population to thrive. The magical Solar Lens provides light and protection from the horrors that lurk in the dark.
Natural disasters are not uncommon in Aurelion. Every 2-3 centuries an event known as the Scourge Incursion occurs. Its beginning is marked by the sea turning an inky black. When the Solar Lens casts an eerie red light, then the Incursion begins in earnest. Creatures of all shapes and sizes rise out of the Black Sea with seemingly only one goal: to kill as many living creatures as they can.”
Aurelion is a personal passion project started some years ago, focussed on creating a believable dark-fantasy setting for table-top RPGs and other creative endeavours. This has so far resulted in about 40,000 words of background lore, multiple short stories, a FATE RPG one-shot that has been converted to two other RPG systems, and the creation of a TCG-style card game.
The multifaceted nature of the setting allow me to explore many different ideas with a solid foundation and I forsee that I will be referring back to it a lot for quite a while.
As an example, The Aurelion Compendium, a compilation of background lore written for the setting, which can be downloaded using the button to the left.
