Design Showcase

Over the course of my game development journey, I’ve worked on 10+ projects, often wearing multiple hats as both a game programmer and technical designer. I’ve shipped two titles—Get Off My Lawn and Urban Nightmare—where I played a key hybrid role, shaping both the technical and gameplay systems.

While shipped games reflect my collaborative experience, it’s in personal projects where I’ve really honed my design problem-solving. These projects gave me space to experiment, iterate fast, and dive deep into gameplay systems.

Here’s a breakdown of one such design challenge from a personal project, where I tackled the problem from both a systems and player experience perspective.

Designing Urgency: Iterating a Dynamic Combo System for Engaging Flow

Design Objective:

While working on the Match-3 game (Link) At the core of this prototype was a simple yet potent player experience goal: create high-pressure, moment-to-moment decision-making that rewards rapid cognition. The guiding principle was to maximize player engagement through a combo-based reward loop that leveraged urgency, intensity, and satisfaction.

In essence, I wanted players to feel like they were in a flow state—where matching tiles wasn’t just an act of planning but a kinesthetic reaction to increasing pressure. The system needed to continuously demand action without overwhelming the player too early.

Initial Implementation: Static Combo Timer

The first pass of the combo system used a fixed 5-second countdown timer that reset with each successful match. As long as the player made another match within that time window, their combo chain would continue.

Rationale at the time:

Simple, easy to understand
Provided a grace window to react
Created a clean, loopable mechanic that supported long combo chains

What Emerged from Playtesting:

Although functionally sound, the mechanic lacked emotional payoff and tension escalation. Players did not feel sufficiently incentivized to keep matching rapidly. The 5-second buffer felt generous, reducing the stakes and softening the intended urgency feedback loop. Essentially, the mechanic was achieving continuity—but not emotional velocity.

Second Iteration: Adaptive Combo Windows with Escalating Pressure

Recognizing that static pressure doesn’t scale with player performance, I pivoted the design toward a dynamic difficulty scaling mechanic centered on adaptive timers. The new system reduced the time window for the next match with every successful combo, creating a tightening loop that naturally escalated tension and excitement.

System Breakdown:

First combo: 5.0s window
Second combo: 4.0s
Third combo: 3.5s
... until a minimum threshold (e.g., 1.5s) was reached

This mechanic leveraged the design principles of:

Paced escalation — The system ramps challenge based on player success
Intrinsic motivators — Rewarding skill expression through increasing mastery demand
Friction vs. flow balance — The early game feels accessible; the late game becomes high-stakes

Why This Design Outperformed Alternatives

Compared to traditional implementations, this adaptive timing mechanic introduced a risk-reward gradient that naturally encouraged:

Optimized decision-making under time constraints
Skill-based differentiation, where high-performing players engaged with a higher-pressure version of the game
A compressed feedback loop, where emotional highs arrived more frequently and with more impact

Alternative approaches considered:

Static combo timer (original) - Lacked scaling tension, no reward curve for mastery
Score multiplier without urgency - Rewarded combos numerically but missed emotional engagement
Level-based timer difficulty - Artificial challenge curve, disconnected from moment-to-moment performance

In contrast, the final system provided a self-adjusting gameplay rhythm, where the player's own performance dictated the level of pressure they experienced—a design philosophy that aligns closely with dynamic game balancing and player-centric feedback loops.

Conclusion: Crafting Emergent Urgency through Systemic Design

This design pivot highlights my approach to gameplay systems: start with a clear experiential goal, prototype and test with intentional friction, and iterate toward mechanics that produce emergent player behavior aligned with your core pillars.

By transforming a static timer into a scalable pressure system, I moved from a functional mechanic to an emotionally resonant gameplay loop. This change not only improved moment-to-moment engagement but also redefined the pacing arc of the entire experience—ensuring that the combo system wasn’t just present, but pivotal.