Tessa Cole
Game Design

Welcome to my game design portfolio, showcasing my skills in level design, game design documents, greyboxing, and prototyping. I am actively seeking internships, freelance, or full-time opportunities in the game design industry.

About Me

I'm a game designer fueled by a lifelong love of interactive storytelling, tactile mechanics, and the kind of joyful chaos that only games can deliver.
My creative approach blends technical precision with playful nostalgia—rooted in decades of exploring and appreciating the medium as a player.

It all began with the Atari, where Pitfall and Frostbite sparked my fascination with level design and player feedback.

From there, I dove into the vibrant world of Sega Megadrive, only owning a handful of games like Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Quackshot. My favourite thing to do was hiring games from the local video shop just to experience new characters, environments, and gameplay styles.

I spent weekends at friend's houses exploring their SNES collections—Mario, Bubsy, and the magic of couch co-op taught me the power of shared play and connection through the medium.

The release of the PlayStation was a turning point. I subscribed to PlayStation Magazine religiously, dissecting demo discs and marveling at titles like Tomb Raider, Abe’s Oddysee, and the Final Fantasy series—each one expanding my understanding of narrative, atmosphere, and emotional design.

Eventually, I discovered the expansive world of PC gaming, where modding, customisation, and community-driven innovation deepened my appreciation for systems thinking and iterative design.

Today, I channel that passion into crafting stylised, humor-driven experiences that celebrate environmental storytelling, tactile feedback, and dynamic gameplay loops. I thrive in collaborative spaces, where feedback fuels refinement and creativity meets structure. Whether I’m designing biomes, refining combat systems, or aligning visual direction across teams, my goal is always the same: to build games that feel alive and memorable.

Skills

Creativity. Drive. Leadership.

I bring a comprehensive understanding of game development across disciplines, enabling me to strategically plan scope, manage timelines, and drive projects toward key milestones with efficiency and precision.

Project Management

HacknPlan/Miro/Google Sheets Discord/Microsoft Teams/Zoom

Scheduling, scrums, milestone tracking, asset lists, risks and mitigations, managing scope and changes in team dynamic

Game Design Documents

Microsoft Word/Google Docs

Technical writing, all facets of game mechanics including diagrams, tables, maps, cross sections.

Setting, world building, character development, target market research, mood boards, sound design, level design, UI/UX design

Blueprint Coding

Unreal Engine

Strong grasp of blueprint coding, understanding of custom events, functions, macros, interfaces, widgets.

Passion for creating functional systems and very interested in procedural generation

Enthusiastic to learn more and expand my skillset.

Level Design and Greyboxing

Unreal Engine/Photoshop/Freehand Drawing

Level block outs, creating engaging play spaces, secrets, interesting achievement areas, testing and evolving gameplay through level design

Testing and Iteration

Interviews/Play test sessions/Google Forms

Testing through all stages of development, creating builds and distributing them for testing amongst peers and recording feedback

Making changes to projects based on client feedback, tester feedback and team member feedback. Knowing when to persist or pivot.

Game Art

Blender/Unreal Engine/Photoshop/ Substance Designer

Strong foundation of knowledge in 3D modeling, retopology, rigging, animation, UV unwrapping, texturing - prefer creating props over characters

Considerable interest in creating materials in substance designer, node based materials and Post Processing shaders in Unreal Engine, and enjoy creating 3D pixel art.

Portfolio

Below is a collection of projects that I have been lucky enough to work on, all created using Unreal Engine 5. For all projects I was the Producer and Lead Designer.

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Education

2024-2025

Advanced Diploma of Game Design and Production

Academy of Interactive Entertainment (AIE)

The Advanced Diploma is a hands-on game design and production program designed to meet industry needs. Over two years, graduates develop innovative design skills and strong technical skills. Game Design students work on a series of game projects with Artists and Programmers to develop their game development and teamwork skills.

MAY2025-JUN2025

Introduction to Game Programming (Short Course)
Academy of Interactive Entertainment (AIE)

A beginner course designed to introduce students to industry standard tools and techniques used in game development.

Teaches basic programming to script game interaction and design game mechanics to create gameplay.

Tessa Cole Game Design