Game Designer
Hudson
Bielstein
Games
Cancelled:
Project "Mother"
By BonusXP
An original, Unreal Engine 5, Action Role-Playing Game under development at BonusXP until its closure in June 2023.
Job: Game Designer, focusing on systems and content.
Enhanced Netflix Ports:
Stranger things: 1984
Stranger Things 3: The Game
By BonusXP
Release: November 9th, 2021 on iOS and Android
Updated ports of Stranger Things: The Game and Stranger Things 3: The Game for the Netflix App for iOS and Android that includes many system improvement and new collectables.
Job: Quality Assurance Analyst.
< about the games
The Dark Crystal:
Age of Resistance Tactics
By BonusXP
Release:
February 4th, 2020 on Switch, PlayStation 4, XBOX One, and Steam
Based on The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, the Netflix Original sequel to Jim Henson's 1982 classic The Dark Crystal, and inspired by tactics classics like Final Fantasy Tactics.
Job: Playtester & Quality Assurance Tester.
< about the game
Stranger Things 3:
The Game
By BonusXP
Release:
July 4th, 2019 on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, XBOX One, Steam, iOS and Android.
Based on the award-winning Netflix television show, Stranger Things.
Follow-up to Stranger Things: The Game, downloaded over 10 million times.
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With the first game being created with no formal Quality Assurance team, I was brought in to be part of BonusXP's first dedicated in-house QA team to cover the certification and release parts of development.
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< Click to learn more about the game
Undertaking,
a Tabletop RPG
Nominated and presented on stage for Best Senior Project at the University of Texas at Dallas' Fall 2018 Capstone Celebration.
Developed over a 6-month development cycle with 700+ personal work hours, including 250+ playtest hours.
Co-created with Jared Bridges.
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Inspired by Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition, Pathfinder, and other popular tabletop roleplaying games, Undertaking aims to prove that the world's most famous RPGs have room for improvement. Our mission statement was to "mechanically give players what they want", and we tried to meet this goal by building with player agency and customization at its core, both in and out of combat.
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Key Features:
- Turn-based combat where players can act at any time at the cost of their next turn.
- Mixed-race and mixed-class mechanics that can expand character customization exponentially with each addition.
- Completely reworked class ability system where players pick their abilities rather than being pigeonholed into class archetypes.
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< Click to view the most recent build
(Comments and feedback appreciated)
Click Here to see changelog
[Frame-Work]:
Draw a New Conclusion
Contract Writer/Editor for Brutiful Games. I edited the final rulebook.
Developed over 2018 and announced and shown live at PAX South 2019.
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Frame-Work is a game of strategy and deception for 2-4 players. In Frame-Work, you and your friends are suspected of committing a crime. Your goal is to prove your innocence by undermining the credibility of the other suspects.
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Learn more about it at the link below.
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< Click to view the Kickstarter
Tower Offense
Writer and cutscene director on a team of 3.
Developed in JavaScript over 48 hours for Chillenium 2017.
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Tower Offense is an inversion of the tower defense genre. I was tasked with writing dialogue in a style reminiscent of a children's book, but not necessarily with a young audience in mind. Cutscenes were built in a proprietary cutscene system.
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< Click image to play now
Bing Bang Boom Tiles
Designed, created, and refined over a week in 2016.
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Bing Bang Boom Tiles is a board game for 2 or 4 players that plays like a mix of chinese checkers and sliding puzzles. On your turn, you move a piece, and then slide a board tile. As the board changes, you constantly setup and block other players, keeping play engaging and strategies complex.
Destined Duel
Designed, programmed, and refined in GameMaker over 24 hours in 2016.
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Destined Duel is an experiment to heavily simplify the fighting game genre without sacrificing its satisfyingly competitive nature. Destined Duel removes player movement, and trades health for a sumo wrestling design. Each hit or successful parry pushes the target back, and a round is won when one swordsman falls off the tower.
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Give it a try. Was the experiment was a success?
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< Click image for itch.io page
The Cordon Right
Created in GameMaker 2 over Summer 2017.
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The Cordon Right is a turn-based RPG created as a vertical slice to experiment with reaction-based, turn-based combat, as well as a programming and writing practice. The resulting game was flawed, but was a great learning experience.
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< Click image for itch.io page
Unlawful (Prototype)
Narrative director and lead writer. Wrote hundreds of lines for procedural script generation.
Developed in GameMaker over 3 months in 2017.
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Unlawful is a single-player procedural murder mystery. On each play through, all actions that the suspects took on the night of the murder and the relationships between the suspects are randomized, as well as their individual lines. Each restart feels very different as a result.
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The game was intended to be played only with the detective's journal, but this prototype also includes a series of quick-question buttons. I worked closely with the programming team to cause the game to be solved completely by questioning suspects based off of information from other questionings.
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Note: The art is programmer art and not representative of the game as a whole.
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< Click image for itch.io page
Following Seas (Version 1)
Environment and narrative designer.
Developed in Unity over 3 months in 2018.
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Following Seas in its initial form is a video game where you control a sailboat as you work your way through different island environments. Think the boat sections from The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, but with a harpoon, grappling hook, and water-based environmental puzzles.
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Following Seas was initially made over Spring 2018, but would go on to have most of it's content scrapped by Summer that same year to refocus it's vision under a different team. This build is from before that development change.
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< Click image for itch.io page
Big Oil
Lead mechanics designer on a strike team of 5.
Developed over a week in 2016.
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Big Oil is a competitive pipe-laying board game for 2-4 players. Each player draws pipe cards and places cards on their turns, aiming to be the first to connect their pipeline to 2 of the board's 3 oil deposits. Players can also play utility cards that change the field, shared pipes that point in all directions, or lay traps, real or fake, to block or bait your opponents.