Chambara, (Unity, 17 People, Game Director) an award-winning local-multiplayer stealth game about sneaky duels in quiet worlds. The whole world is black-and-white and so are the characters, so players must camouflage into the environment to ambush each other in tense battles.
I served as the project lead and game director, and oversaw all facets of the project from its initial pitch in Spring 2014 to its final release in Winter 2017. My primary duties included defining and communicating the project vision, co-developing design, art, and marketing plans, liasing with external parties, and polishing existing features in-engine. Here is a pitch deck detailing the full scope of the game during our preproduction phase.
Working with a handpicked leadership team, we built two pitches for the game as it went through two phases of development across both the 2014 Dare to be Digital game jam and the 2015-2016 USC Capstone project class. Here is a pitch proposal for the game used to submit the game to USC Games’ capstone program in Spring of 2015, where our original prototype was expanded with the support of a large team of student developers. Over the course of that year of development, we would regularly present project status to a board of senior professors with presentations like this.
Working closely with our lead designer, Esteban, we developed comprehensive documentation of our menu flow, core game loop, and all inputs and interactions in the game.
Over the course of the project, I oversaw general creative direction and theming by collaborating with our art, marketing, and audio teams.
We codified a tone of elegant, sportsmanlike competition centered around tranquil stages and goofy, nonlethal weapons. This direction was accentuated by a celebratory, festive tone informed by regular public exhibitions at festivals. This tone is best expressed in the below trailer, which I shot and edited.
Ultimately, Chambara was a resounding critical success. It has received the following award nominations, and is available for purchase on all major platforms, including PlayStation 4 and Steam. If you would like a key for Chambara for portfolio evaluation purposes, please email me at thatkevinwong@icloud.com.
- BAFTA Ones to Watch Award (2015) (Won)
- IGF Award Best Student Game (2016) (Nominee)
- Unity Award for Best Student Game (2016) (Nominee)
- Best of the MIX @ E3 (2016) (Won)
- Tokyo Game Show Sense of Wonder Night (Nominee)
LINKED DOCUMENTS:
KEVIN JAMES WONG 