App, UI, & Game Design

I created the following designs, and I also wrote their documentation.

Web, Facebook, & PC

• Birdopolis for Facebook. Birdopolis is a social game where players spot birds, become friends with them, and build up their yards into awesome cities for birds. The game is partially inspired by real-world bird watching, and all bird characters in the game are visually based on real birds. The Facebook info page for the game is at www.facebook.com/birdopolis, and the game can be played at apps.facebook.com/birdopolis.
  
  

• Nurturing Birds. The game was originally planned to have a set of minigames where players helped their bird friends raise their families from eggs to chicks to fledglings. However, time constraints required a light-weight version of nurturing be designed for fast implementation, and the Nurturing Birds Lite document covers this as a click-fest in place of skill-based minigames.
• Civic Buildings. Civic buildings were added to the game as an additional content gate: players would have to build civic buildings to increase the population limit of their yards, so that new, different birds could visit the yard. See the design, Birdopolis Civic Buildings.
  
  
• Sully's Workshop. This is a long-term appointment item where players obtain game resources by playing daily over a 5-day cycle. Some of the resources obtained from the workshop are very difficult for the player to obtain by other means (other than sending requests to friends and having them respond), which makes playing on consecutive days valuable. See the design, Birdopolis Sully's Workshop.
• Batch 2 Birds. This document specifies the second batch of birds planned for Birdopolis. It covers all aspects of adapting real birds to become bird characters in the game, such as their appearance, gender, region, food preferences, and so on. See Birdopolis Birds Batch 2.
• Bird Collection UI. One aspect of the game was to encourage players to "collect" all the birds in the game, by spotting them and by gaining multiple levels of friendship (bronze, silver, gold) with them. The Birdopolis Bird Collection UI document specifies how the bird collection interface is organized.
• Gifting and Requests. The Birdopolis Gifting and Requests document specifies how the in-game social gifting and requests systems operate, both for functionality and user interface.

• Rhythm Zone. Rhythm Zone is a music game similar to Guitar Hero or Rock Band with the innovative feature of playing any music you have on your PC in the game itself. I was the lead designer of the stand-alone Web beta test version and the Facebook beta test version (neither currently active) and a co-designer of the PC downloadable version; see Rhythm Zone (store.steampowered.com/app/38900/). See the Facebook design, RZ Facebook.
  
  

Mobile Phone & Kindle

• Crazy Night Out. This is a story adventure game for mobile phones, available on Verizon Wireless. Players take the roll of a character and progress through a branching story driven by the choices the players make and how they develop their characters. The design treatment covers the concepts and ideas from which the final game was developed. See the game treatment, Crazy Night Out Game Treatment.
• Name That Tune Deluxe. This design became version 3 of the hit mobile game, Name That Tune! New features included multiplayer play, tournaments, and friend-vs-friend challenges. See the design and UI flow document, NTTD Flows, and the functional specification, NTTD Functional Specification.
• ToneMaker v6. This is a UI design for a mobile phone app that allows users to make their own ringtones by choosing sound tracks, recording audio/voice right on the phone, and mixing these elements to produce ringtones. See the UI design document, ToneMaker v6 UI Specifications.
• MovieMaker. This is a design for a mobile phone app that allows users to make their own mobile movies by shooting and editing videos right on their mobile phones. The design supported sharing movies between users, rating movies, and entering contests. See the design and UI flow document, MovieMaker UI Flows.
• Dream Shots. Dream Shots is a mobile phone app that allows users to merge pictures of themselves into scenes provided by the app. Want to be best buds with a celebrity? Wave to your friends while on a tropical island? Dream Shots lets you put yourself into the action. See the design and UI flow document, Dream Shots Flow.
• Spartacus: Blood and Sand. This is a game concept for a Facebook game on Starz' Spartacus: Blood and Sand series. (Starz selected a different studio for the project, so this concept wasn't implemented.) See the concept document, Spartacus Facebook Concept.
• G-Unit Stuntin'. This is a game concept for a mobile phone game featuring the rap group G-Unit (50 Cent, Lloyd Banks, and Tony Yayo) as motorcycle stunt riders. See the concept document, G-Unit Stuntin' Concept.
• Fortune Teller for Kindle. This is a light-weight fortune telling app for the Kindle platform. See the app specification, Kindle Fortune Teller.