Game Designer
My name is Pedro Oramas and I am a designer with a special focus on Level, Content and general Game Design. I have worked for international companies such as King (Activison-Blizzard) and, currently, Rockstar Games. I also develop games on my own and have collaborated with indie studios. I look forward to keeping learning, proving my skills and showing my passion for creating new and awesome experiences.
Pyramid Solitaire Saga - King.
Level Designer.
-Took full ownership of the level design for Pyramid Solitaire Saga. Supervised the level design, communicated and provided feedback to the outsourcing team and discussed with the in-house studio the game's future.
-Released weekly content and analyzed its performance over time. Iterated on feedback and data. Tweaked a total of 106 levels based on those analyses.
-Reviewed and approved the release of 960 levels (64 episodes). Followed a strict reviewing method to make sure the levels remained up to King's standards.
-Created 75 levels (5 episodes). Released them and kept track of their performances, iterating quickly when needed.
-Wrote documentation to keep track of the game's performance. Created documents for improving the level design with new/updated techniques and shared them with the outsourcing team.
Airport Masters & Airport Racing
Creator (Game design & development).
Airport Masters and Airport Racing are part of my series of airport games.
Airport Masters (Challenges game):
Sandbox mode: Players can roam freely in an airport, eventually certain missions such as delivering luggage, escaping from airport security, etc. will appear. With many secrets and shortcuts to find.
Challenge mode: Simple and short levels that boost the player’s adrenaline; racing a plane, frogger-style level, hidden secrets, etc.
Airport Racing (Racer game):
Crazy and fun races in airport environments. Clashing and drifting are crucial to winning the races.
Item pickups. Players can pick up items and use them in the race, from throwing wheels to leaking oil that makes other cars spin.
4 unlockable circuits. From a dense forest, to narrow city streets or tropical islands. Plus planes landing and taking off, of course.
9 airport vehicles. There are 3 categories. Light, Mid and Heavy. Players can have fun clashing with heavy vehicles or drifting crazily with the light ones.
Airport Racing Short Gameplay
Illustration by Esmeralda Perdomo Mendoza
Iskandar: The Spear of Truth - Mysteric Studios.
Lead Level Designer.
Iskandar is an indie Action RPG game developed by a team of 23 members. As the lead level designer, my main goal was to guide and assist my department to provide quality levels. For this, I also worked closely with the rest of the designers and the programmers. The outcome is a strong environmental-based level design, integrated puzzles and many secrets including treasures, resources and easter eggs. All that through 6 levels that I reviewed, QA’d and approved. To know more about its development, please click here.
Puzzle Design
Puzzles are an essential part of Iskandar. The level design team took upon the puzzle design and we integrated it into the level design. I designed some of the puzzles and supervised the quality of the rest. The goal was to create a fun and challenging puzzle experience that would enrich both the level and narrative of the game.
Some of the puzzles designed for the game are memory, riddle, maze, quid pro quo and/or all of them together. But is in the game dungeons where the puzzles take a protagonist role. Sometimes even the whole dungeon becomes a puzzle (Desert dungeon, see left).
Gods of Khorya - White Dragon Studios.
Game / Level Designer.
As part of a 35+ team developing an MMORPG, my main duty was to support the lead game designer with content and economy design, as well, as being part of the level design team and reviewing peers’ work. Some of my tasks and achievements:
-Designed a chart (picture on the right) to classify and assign stats to the 450+ creatures that are in the game (more about it below the picture).
-Designed 650+ attack movements. I designed a formula to balance their cost and damage depending on the level when the attack is learned.
Once we could try it on an actual combat on the engine, both stats and attacks were correctly balanced on the first try. Only small changes needed to be done.
-Some of my other tasks are creating and balancing the creature's abilities (50+ to date) and assigning the type of elements every creature has.
-Set and balanced a regeneration formula for Health Points, Mana and Physical Power. The formula regenerated every second taking into account the level and bonuses of the creatures.
Level Design:
-To date, I have designed 3 levels for the game (below is more about it).
How it works: The name of the stats are on the left, while the names of the creatures (which are covered) are at the top.
To begin, I check the creature’s design to make them magical, physical or balanced. After that, I classify them as DPS, healer, tank, damager, buffer, etc. That classification is done in a different document. Once it is done, I assign a 1º-12º* (*or the number of creatures in the chart) value to each stat. This helps me to know which creatures are stronger or weaker and to balance that. Then, I assign the real stat depending on the aforementioned value (for example, Creature 1º has 50 HP, and Creature 12º have 21 HP. The rest will have their stats between those numbers).
Each creature has a highlighted stat in which they are especially good at it. Also, the stats remain always within the minimum and maximum range that had already been set at the beginning of the design.
I make this chart for every type (tanks, DPS, etc.) which are also balanced in a different document. For example, tanks will have a better defense than healers generally. Following that formula, removing or adding creatures is very simple.
Level Design
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Main city
The city is meant to be some sort of imperial city, so I wanted to make it symmetrical and lustrous. With wide avenues, a wealthy district in the city centre, many cultural places, parks, etc. But it also has less developed areas such as the dark-blue rings or the harbour. This allows a rich environmental story-telling. One of my goals was to add back-alleys, shortcuts and interesting hidden spots within the city.
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Semi-open level
This is one of the initial levels so my objective was to make clear where the player must go. A reward system was designed for those players that want to risk or invest more time exploring, they will be rewarded with what they find (resources, secrets, treasures, etc.). However, all players must complete certain challenges/combats/missions to conclude the level.
City moodboard
Countryside level moodboard