Ben Rowland
Technical Designer and Gameplay Programmer
My Goals:
Understand the perspective of players to bridge the gap between design intention and game experience. Find game feel through iterative playtesting strategies informed by player feedback.
Combine my love for tabletop games and digital games to understand what players want and create storytelling experiences that engage them with seamless gameplay.
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Check out some of my work below and reach out to me with any questions or comments. Currently looking for professional work that will utilize my strengths and help me build upon my existing skillset.
NIO USA R&D Project
My time at NIO began with a solo internship project alongside 8 other interns for the summer of 2023. At the end of our internship window, I pitched my project's proof of concept to my manager and coworkers as evidence of a larger improvement possibility. Through this, I earned a contract extended to continue to pursue the goals I set out to fulfill. During that time, this project was awarded more resources, another contract extension, and correspondence with designers and developers in China pursuing similar goals.
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I've learned much about professional development practices during my time at NIO. Our small team uses an agile workflow to constantly meet deadlines and deliverables. My time here will be coming to an end in March 2024, but I thank NIO and my team for the experiences I have been able to have. I am looking forward to moving on from here and bringing my Unity3D and C# development skills back to a more game-focused career.
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At the conclusion of the project, I had the opportunity to join in a patent application based on the project I participated in. Unfortunately, at this time, the details I can share are limited due to the R&D nature of the project.
MIMIC: Social Crowd Navigation Simulation
Started in September of 2021, MIMIC is a cutting-edge industry tool written in C# for simulating pedestrian movement by combining multiple existing models and implementing custom social behaviors. Beyond the simulation, MIMIC offers customization options for creating agent profiles and scene layouts, VR experimentation for first-person navigation assessment, and the ability to read in and output data in CSV format.
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See more at the MIMIC website ; password is %TreeCity .
Connection
Beyond Time
Connection Beyond Time is a two-player narrative puzzle game made in Unreal Engine 5 that takes place in the same location, but at two different times. Players will need to communicate and cooperate to explore their environment and learn more about their relationship.
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See more at the Connection Beyond Time website .
Affinity & Aptitude Tabletop Game + Remir Worldbuilding Setting
Affinity & Aptitude is a custom tabletop game rules set I created to appeal to the shortcoming I saw in many other popular systems. It focuses on creativity and free-range character growth.
To accompany this system, the Remir Worldbuilding Setting is an environment specifically created to encourage the systems at work in A&A. It comes with lore, locations, and quests suggested for use in campaigns.
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See more about Affinity & Aptitude at my itch.io page .
See more about Remir at my itch.io page .
Unreal 5 Projects
As I grow as a game developer, exploring new engines becomes exciting and a chance to test my skills. Unreal 5 has been quite a good engine for quick prototyping and development. Featured here are two personal projects that showcase some of my experimentation with the new game engine. Each of them uses some non-conventional movement developed and iterated on in short time constraints.
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See more about Rebound at my itch.io site .
See more about Dark Reflections at my itch.io site .
We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams."