ore
January 2017 - May 2018
Started in early 2017 by start-up company, Couch Cosmonauts, ORE is a 4-player couch co-op space mining game. Players must frantically load up a planetary rover before entering a hostile alien world in an attempt to grab as much precious minerals as they can before being overwhelmed by the local populous. Players have only each other and their selected tools to survive the far reaches of space. With a wide selection of interesting tools and interactions, unavoidable friendly fire and beautiful worlds to explore, ORE consistently produces a fun time on the couch with your three best friends.
The design goals of ORE is to produce a balanced, fun and endlessly playable four-player co-op experience. Cooperation is incentivized (but not enforced) through interesting interactions between tools such as using a rifle to detonate a mine resulting in a much larger explosion. In designing this, each item had to feel interesting enough to be used on it's own as well as dynamic enough to allow each set of players create their own interactions and emergent gameplay. This design space was only complicated further with the addition of PvP Arena mode as then each item needed to be balanced against each other.
Specific roles and some examples of work
System Design Lead
Designed multiple weapon designs
Balanced combat including weapon damages, player health, enemy interactions, enemy health and enemy damage
Designed mission rewards and mission progression system
Gameplay Engineer
Programmed and fine-tuned player movement
Implemented combat and item interactions
Implemented dynamic camera and respawn system
Added detailed stats system/user data recording system used for combat balancing feedback
Member of marketing team
Produced promotional videos and created some promotional media.
Released May 2018!
