My name is Joshua, and I am a designer.


    I am passionate about play. Play provides a safe place to explore our world, to test our ideas and skills freely and without consequence. Play is such a necessary part of life that you will notice humans aren't the only animal that plays, and that even infants learn the language of play with ease. As we grow and begin to harness a deeper understanding of our world, the methods by which we play should grow with us. That's where my discipline comes in; building upon the intrinsic sense of play we all have, in order to create a more complex method of play that is just as easy to grasp.

    I take pride in my work. I work smart to align the content I create with the vision of the product, user, and game design theory. My entire body of work, I believe, showcases this. This all comes back to my passion; to create unforgettable experiences that emphasize player agency and discovery through elegant design.

    Within this website, you'll find a collection of my professional and personal work as well as my contact info and resume. I hope you enjoy my portfolio, and thank you for taking the time to look!

    -Joshua

What my colleagues have to say

    “Josh and I worked together for more then a year, in that time he demonstrated a rare combination of insightful creative thinking and collaborative spirit. He owned large swaths of our combat content including: narrative pitches for new environments/enemies, greybox prototypes, and development of complex boss encounters. Our project had broad system-heavy requirements which he was able to organically work into his content.

    Josh was also an outspoken voice for community building within the team, bringing disciplines together behind a common vision, and bonding them in a positive atmosphere. I was frequently struck by his ability to augment his work with real world knowledge, creating more unique and personality-rich content. I hope to work with him again in the future, look forward to seeing what he comes up with next, and recommend him for any team.

-Jordan Patz
Lead Game Designer, Iron Tiger, NCSOFT
    “Josh is a great innovative designer who is very easy to work with. Even when presented with limited tools he was capable of making new and interesting designs that stayed grounded with previous work done. 

    When it came to building out design tools Josh was always open to discuss needs and areas of improvements in his workflow. He really helped solidify tool functionalities and ways to improve them. In turn his input and feedback helped me grow as a tools engineer.

    It was great working with Josh and I would love to work with him again..

-Wade Hribar
Tools Engineer, Iron Tiger, NCSOFT
     “Yeah, Joshua is pretty good.

-Benjamin Gross
Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer, Pizza Club Games
    “​I had the pleasure of working with Josh on several levels of Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris. He is full of clever idea and is no stranger to changing or killing a good idea if it isn't working. He approaches problems with excitement and a positive attitude.

    To be specific, after we shipped the Lara Croft base game, we had the daunting task of creating 2 DLC levels from scratch in 4 weeks (if I remember correctly). We met to discuss how we were going to complete both levels in such tight time constraints. He mapped out his ideas, built a quick working level, we played through it, made changes and started production in a couple of days. It remains one of my favorite level in the game.

    Bottom line, I'd love to work with him again.

-Matt McCulloch
Lead Environment Artist, Crystal Dynamics
    “Josh is the kindest, most humble, hardest working and perceptive game designer you will meet. His attention to detail is unparalleled and his work is just plain awesome. 

    Josh will put in the time to get things right. He asks the right questions. He gets along with everyone. 

    Josh designed levels and mechanics at Sifteo for a number of games, including our TMNT game and Sandwich Kingdom: Ice Palace, a lite RPG maze explorer. He did fantastic work. 

    I dare you to find someone who is better to work with.

-Jeevan Kalanithi
CEO, Sifteo
    “I've had the pleasure of working with and managing Josh over eight months at Sifteo, where he worked as a lead level designer. I worked with him closely on Ice Palace, the sequel to a popular Sifteo launch game, Sandwich Kingdom. As the lead/exec producer for that game, I got to see Josh's brilliant design mind at work, from beginning to end. Working with the team's artist and writer, Josh was the de facto creative lead, bringing the three disciplines of game making together harmoniously. Josh created beautifully detailed game design documents and style guides for Ice Palace and got the team to buy-in before starting work on the level design for the game. His level design skills were already very advanced in his previous game, TMNT Ninja Slide, but they jumped up to an even higher level for Ice Palace. Whether it was creating and implementing new game mechanics, or taking popular mechanics from the previous game and improving upon them, the levels he made were fun, tight, and a pure joy to play. 

    Outside of that project, Josh is an extremely hard working yet easy going person, and he was a pleasure to manage. He contributes to weekly team discussions, whether it's about building team culture, critiquing internal games, or brainstorming new game ideas, Josh is always involved and contributing. He is always eager to volunteer to help with conference events and support company activities, even if they're on the weekends. 

    Ultimately, Josh is one of the most creative designers I've ever worked with and one of the most fun to hang out with. He will excel in anything he puts his mind to and I hope I'll have many more opportunities to work with him in my career!

-Bernie Lin
Director of Production, Sifteo
    “Initially, I was very impressed with Josh's design test. He showed an unusual awareness for the users experience and a fantastic depth in the creativity of his Level Design. Once he was on board, Josh very quickly mastered our tool set and became one of our strongest Level Designers.

    His enthusiasm, communication skills and professional demeanor meant that he rapidly became a key member of the team. During the eight months that Josh reported to me, he consistently demonstrated all of the qualities of a much more experienced designer, and I strongly endorse him for any Level Design position.

-Dave Walsh
Lead Level Designer, Idol Minds
    “When we brought Josh in as a junior level designer on our action RPG title, we were not just pleased with the results, we were truly astonished. You expect to spend substantial time training new designers and you expect them to need a lot of hand-holding and critical feedback before they're creating game-ready content. Josh threw those assumptions out the window. The visual quality of his levels was very strong from the beginning. He understood the requirements gameplay put on his designs and built accordingly. He very quickly was making complex scripts in our proprietary scripting system. And he did all of this in a number of hours we never expected we would get.

    Josh isn't just a content machine, though: He is one of those guys that makes a team better just by being a part of it. He is affable, creative, and inspiring to others and he would be a tremendous asset to any video game project.

-Chris Floyd
Lead Game Designer, Idol Minds

Skills

Level Design
Visual Scripting
Narrative Design
Basic 3D Modeling
Adobe Creative Suite
Combat
Puzzle Design
Technical Writing
Grey/white Boxing
Image + Video Editing

Projects

2018 - Current
Psychonauts 2
What can I say about this wild project? I have never worked on anything quite like it. With compelling narrative as one of this game's core pillars, and much of that narrative focusing around dream worlds and psychedelic experiences, designing coherent yet contextual content was a very fun challenge!

I was the sole designer on two separate small teams, acting as co-lead on one and team lead on the other, that were responsible for delivering both Psychonauts 2 E3 playable demos within two months. These demos were used heavily in the process of Microsoft’s acquisition of Double Fine, and they served as the public face of P2 for the first time since early production.

One of my largest responsibilities was to build and maintain an entire “Brain”. A "Brain" is a portion of gameplay that lasts roughly an hour and a half, wherein all design and systems are tied explicitly to narrative. This highly iterative process was conducted over the course of many milestones spanning two years, but the alpha framework was built within six months. Playable whitebox was built by section, with each section reaching first playable within two to three weeks, for a total of 8 sections. I was the sole designer on this “Brain.”

My responsibilities on P2 extended game-wide. I had a critical role in prototyping, building, iterating upon, and maintaining innumerable areas, features, and systems within the game. When I wasn’t working on my “Brain”, I helped rebuild parts of the game that weren’t hitting the mark, brought enemy NPCs from paper prototype to functional actors in game, designed and built two boss fights in one month each, implemented cutscenes and dialog, provided feedback on narrative so it supported the design of any given area, designed tutorials for many of the game’s features, and scripted countless actors and objects in Blueprint.

On Amnesia Fortnight, a two week internal game jam with small teams, I designed and built a branching narrative system that comprised the core gameplay for an unannounced title.

Oh, and we won a Golden Joystick award for Xbox Game of the Year!
2015 - 2017
Super Secret NCSOFT Mobile Game (unreleased)
Leaving Crystal Dynamics, I went on in search of a company I could help contribute to their culture and production process. NCSOFT had just opened a mobile games studio in San Mateo, and I sought to get my foot in the door.

While I can't discuss the games we worked on, I can say that I contributed to two projects over the course of my two years at Iron Tiger. I helped to paper prototype, design, pitch, build, and iterate upon myriad content including but not limited to levels, enemy families, systems, features, matchmaking, and progression.

I also helped design and improve in-house tools, including the workflow of said tools. I worked closely with our tools engineer (who gave me a recommendation which you can read below), and created technical documents as in-house tools were being developed during production.

Speaking of culture, I was fairly integral in Iron Tiger's hiring process. I interviewed candidates for mid to director level positions within Design, UI/UX, Art, and QA, to ensure competency and company culture fit. 
2014 - 2015
​
Rise of the Tomb Raider (released/shipped)
Continuing my experience at Crystal Dynamics, my role on Rise of the Tomb Raider is very similar to that of LCTOO. My responsibilities include designing levels, interactive objects, scripted sequences, and contributing to overall game design. I also helped prototype, pitch, and design a game mode with the express purpose to lower attrition rates, encourage competitive single player gameplay, and generate revenue. I repurposed levels for this game mode, designed combat setups, modified existing geometry, created new geometry, and designed procedural missions.

I also worked extensively on the Baba Yaga DLC, setting up mystical and trippy levels and narrative for the player to tread through. I made some contributions to the Endurance Mode DLC as well.
2013 - 2014
Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris (released/shipped)
For my first title at Crystal Dynamics in Redwood City, CA, I was responsible for designing levels, interactive objects, scripted sequences, and contributing to overall game design. I delivered playable, on screen content within first 2 weeks, rising to a velocity of 10 design alpha levels per week, which included traversal layouts, combat rooms, puzzle rooms, and highly scripted sequences. My levels comprise 50% of all full length dungeons, and received the highest satisfaction feedback on average according to user feedback.

Additionally, I built ~75% of all planned downloadable content for LCTOO on a two man team, after the rest of the team transitioned off the project.
2013
Electropocalypse (released/shipped)
Designed levels and UI/UX for Electropocalypse, an independent puzzle game based on functional electrical engineering, available on PC, Mac, and iPad. Balanced progression of puzzles from basic to advanced electrical engineering concepts (roughly equivalent to the first 2 weeks of a 101 college level course) by scripting puzzles and win/fail conditions in Python.
2013
Romo's Robot Space Race (released/shipped)
Prototyped and designed a story mode and UI for Romotive's iPhone robot that onboards
the player through a series of increasingly complex interaction and feature oriented missions. With the introduction of story mode, Romo's average user play time increased by 30 minutes and users returned 5 times more frequently. Romo also received a Best of CES 2014 award.
2013
Richard Garfield's Wee Warriors (unreleased)
The last project I worked on at Sifteo was Richard Garfield's Wee Warriors, and my responsibilities supported my role as senior designer. My duties encompassed content and game design, as well as UI/UX. Wee Warriors is a strategy fighting game designed for Sifteo Cubes. Each player would be given a choice of characters, equipment, and fortunes that alter the outcome of each round, and then they would pit their choices against one another. 
2012 - 2013
Sandwich Kingdom: Ice Palace (released/shipped)
Developing my tenure at Sifteo, my role on Sandwich Kingdom: Ice Palace was lead designer, and encompassed 100% of the level design and entity scripting, overall game design, creation of technical documents, team management, and scoping. I saw this project from its conception to its release six months later. SK:IP is the second installment in the Sandwich Kingdom franchise; a lite RPG for Sifteo Cubes. My vision for the project was to improve upon existing mechanics, and add new features that allowed a more robust player experience. At the time of my departure from Sifteo, SK:IP was our top performing title.
2012
Nickelodeon's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Ninja Slide (released/shipped)
As an introductory position at Sifteo in San Francisco, CA, my titles was level and game designer. I created 100+ puzzles (totaling roughly four hours of gameplay) for TMNT:NS, as well as designed several of the mechanics. My role further required me to create technical documents. TMNT:NS was Sifteo's first licensed title, and it released November of 2012.
2011 - 2012
Warrior's Lair / Ruin (unreleased)
My first professional position in the industry was at Idol Minds in Louisville, CO. My role was a level designer on Warrior's Lair (formerly Ruin), and I was responsible for creating sector based maps that were included in the procedural generation of entire dungeons. I was also responsible for visual scripting and basic content design.
Contact:
e-mail: [email protected]