Everwild
Everwild was Rare's next new IP, but was sadly cancelled in 2025.
During my six year tenure on the project, my areas of focus included:
- Breathing life into the creature AI
- Designing gameplay features
- Prototyping experiences
Overview
Studio
Rare
Role
Senior Technical Designer
Platform
Console
Date
2018 - 2024
Key Skills
Creature AI
Gameplay Design
Prototyping
Inclusive Design
Leadership
Disclaimer
Due to ongoing NDA's I'm unable to publicly share any examples of my work.
Involvement
I brought creatures to life,
I accrued a deep knowledge of designing and utilising utility systems for decision making, and worked extensively with Behaviour Trees and State Trees to implement compelling creature behaviour.
I stepped up as the acting lead for the AI feature team, collaborating with programmers, artists, animators, and the audio team.
I thoroughly documented our AI systems, and trained other designers and animators to build behaviours.
Designed engaging interactions,
I worked closely with the Creative Director to set out the design pillars and principles for the experience.
From these, I then designed a wide array of gameplay features from low level interactions to long term progression systems.
I deeply researched player to player interaction and developed a framework for pro-social play.
Prototyped out new ideas,
In UE4/UE5 I quickly built out proof of concepts to test new features.
I produced block-out art and animation assets as needed for quick iteration.
Once built, I conducted regular playtests of the features and integrated player feedback.
And looked beyond the expected.
I championed inclusive design approaches as a Gaming 4 Everyone Champ and Accessmas elf, resulting in two inclusive design workshops for the team.
With the Xbox's Gaming Sustainability team, and the UN's Play for the Planet initiative, I explored sustainable development.
I also represented the project and vision in studio wide catch-ups, and Xbox executive check-ins.