Level Designer
Game Designer
Teacher
Hi, I’m Sophia.
I’m a Level Designer in Australia with 10+ years of experience, I spent five of those running Sydney’s game dev meetup Beer and Pixels and I love making games.
I value the player’s time, empower them, challenge them and approach game development as a holistic exercise, having worn many different hats over the years.
Why not take a look at my portfolio below or get in touch at phiaherself@gmail.com!
Unannounced FPS
Level Designer, 2024-2025
I joined Uppercut as their upcoming Unreal Engine-based “Thinking Person’s Shooter” went into production, championing one of six of the game’s worlds from scratch to pre-alpha, then assisting a designer on their world to help meet their alpha deadlines.
Starting with raw concepts and a narrative overview as my north star, I ideated an overall space and flow through it, proofing my thinking with node-based diagrams, sketches, Miro flow charts and informal presentations. At the same time I took concepts of mechanics and enemies from the game directors and formalised rule-sets for them so they’d function systemically and in line with vision, before documenting them for other teams to develop.
The workflow on the project was to iterate on sections of the world until they were approved, then hand them off to artists and move onto other sections. This approach was light on documentation and heavy on discussion. It also required a high degree of technical hygiene and I maintained the structure of the level so artists could parse the hierarchy effectively.
The game’s unconventional mechanics always threw interesting challenges at the team, and we resolved them consistently together through experimentation and discussion. I learnt a lot on this project, in particular I was introduced to Rational Level Design and approaches to formalising level design documentation to better communicate across departments.
Senior Level Designer, 2021-2023
Shadowman: Darque Legacy
Shadowman is a Souls-Like game being developed in Unreal Engine 5 by Blowfish Studios. Joining as a Mid Level Designer I made six of the game’s expansive eleven levels from scratch and in line with the needs of the narrative. This process included ideating, sketching and greyboxing with a view to test early and test often rapidly prototyping with engineers to prove out the experience.
Not long into the role I was promoted to Senior Level Designer, which meant handling my regular duties and then also acting as Level Design Lead in production meetings, mentoring and coaching the Junior Level Designer on my team and having a greater say on the overall design of the game.
As a Souls-Like game there was a strong emphasis on interesting, challenging spaces where encounter complexity would test the player, demanding they develop a strong knowledge of enemy patterns, the ability to anticipate problems, respond quickly and replaying to develop their instrumental play.
The game’s design presented interesting challenges, in particular the balance required in making spaces interesting to be in, cost-effective for production, have compelling encounters and still being engaging for the player after the umpteenth time they’ve died and had to replay it.
I’m very proud of all the work I did on Shadowman and it really tested and pushed my skills in unexpected ways. Being the most narrative heavy game I’d worked on meant I had to figure out a consistent approach to spatialising narrative with built-in flexibility and I created an approach I’d come to call Accordion Spaces which made a huge mark on how effective my designs were.
I managed the Certificate IV, Diploma and Advanced Diploma programs for North Sydney TAFE’s Game Development course, as well as teaching Game Design classes.
As a teacher I delivered content on game development skills, production methodology, soft skills and modeled behaviour for the students while they completed regular group exercises that would, cumulatively, become their semester’s major work.
As Course Coordinator I was also responsible for the overall well-being of students on campus, ensuring teachers were teaching to the curriculum and were well resourced and also running events.
I regularly ran Game Jams, where students and the broader Sydney development community was invited onto campus for a weekend of fun, socialising and strictly time-boxed game development.
North Sydney TAFE
Course Coordinator, 2017-2018
Game Design Teacher, 2016-2017
AIE Sydney
As a game design teacher at AIE I had a class of 22 students in a simulated work environment to whom I delivered college content, hosted discussions and assigned exercises meant to help them think like game designers and develop specific, measurable skills.
Delivering and creating content for students also required me to have a broad knowledge of games as media and an industry to draw from as well as the ability to break down concepts and explain myself in ways that met their level of experience and interest.
Along with marking regular assessments, teachers acted as mentors, creative consultants and assessors for the students’ group major works, all of which required a strong ability to give feedback that is well reasoned, fair and meets the student at their level.
Game Designer, 2016
IntoScience
IntoScience was a suite of educational games made in Unity that was designed to teach science lessons and principles to high school students with a large user base across Australia, US, UK and Canada.
I worked as a Game Designer tasked with creating a new line of content and activities for early secondary education students to complement their existing open world approach. This new content built iteratively over time using a combination of paper prototypes and in-engine scripting.
Unfortunately, development of new IntoScience content was shuttered in mid-2016 for financial reasons and the team was reduced to a skeleton crew maintaining access to the existing online resources.
Swift Programmer, 2015
Trade Samurai
Trade Samurai is an iOS game for teaching foreign exchange (Forex) trading practices through gameplay, narrative vignettes and metaphor. It targets an audience aged 40 upwards with no assumed gaming capability, simply access to a smartphone.
As a contractor I used Apple’s Swift programming language to design and implement gameplay and narrative moments, seeding the Subject Matter Expert’s content into the game to teach specific outcomes to the player base.
As part of the three person team working on this game our outcome of creating a long-form prototype to raise seed money was successful, with more than a million dollars in investment capital being raised.
Level Designer, 2015
KSpace
KSpace is an educational exhibit aimed at primary school children, created by Spinifex in the Unity engine for the National Museum of Australia with the intention of delivering formalised educational content to engage younger Australians in the history of the country.
Players engage in groups of four, personalising a robot avatar together then play through one of eight scenarios depicting moments in Australian history, working together through each to find key objects, receive engaging narration and follow a narrative that reflects the culture and events of the moment.
I worked on four of the eight scenarios, bugfixing for The Royal Adelaide Show and Franklin River, implementing feedback on Lake Mungo and creating the Sydney Harbour Bridge scenario from the resources provided.
The installation was deployed in 2015 and finally decommissioned in 2023.
Level Designer, 2014
Majestic Nights
Majestic Nights is an isometric action-adventure game made in Unity and set during the 1980s, in a world where no conspiracy theory can go far enough to explain the mysteries you find yourself plunging into.
I joined the project as a contractor doing some bugfixing and feedback on Chapter 0, then creating all 16 levels of Chapter 1 from scratch using a formal script as my guide. I worked to carefully spacialise moments for dramatic effect and to reinforce the pillars of the game, being stealth, action and conversation.
Being the only level designer on the project I had to wear many hats, not only designing and implementing spaces, but implementing basic cutscenes, placing gameplay elements and using a visual scripting interface to make the game respond to each of the player’s actions in satisfying ways.
Level Designer, 2014
Metrocide
Metrocide is a top-down stealth action shooter made in Cocos 2D. Set in futuristic Metro City, players must navigate the city and its inhabitants, seeking out targets to eliminate, avoiding retribution or police attention.
I was involved in the game jam that originated this project and took a contract designing the second of the game’s three levels and creating some simple, modular 3D assets for the game in Maya.
The procedural generation of targets, civilians and antagonists required an openness to the design of the level that was challenging. There had to be a mixture of plausable paths from any major area of the map to any other, areas where antagonists and targets would spawn from, routes for NPCs to walk that frustrated the player’s ability to reach their target unseen and sightlines that didn’t allow the player easy shots from a distance.
QA Tester, 2014
Towncraft
Towncraft is an isometric city-building and crafting game developed in Cocos 2D. I was contracted as a QA tester, paying attention mostly to the economy, systems balancing and possible quality of life gains for the player.
As part of my time on the project I tried to isolate particular economic strategies that were over-powered, under-powered or that undermined the game’s logic and aims.
