Kelly Tran

As Principal Applied Designer at Evolved Play, I performed as the high level vision holder for game design, advocating for our design pillars and working across art, engineering, and narrative.

Narrative Design
-Designed mechanics that aligned with story and theme of game.
-Worked with creative lead on aligning story beats to gameplay moments.

Level Design
-Designed and implemented grid-based maps in Unity.
-Designed free-movement maps with interaction points for players to support collaboration and teamwork.

Core Design
-Concepted player interactions and related mechanics.
-Concepted mechanics for movement, character powers, puzzles, and items.
-Balanced items and frequency distributions on maps.
-Balanced victory conditions and resources on maps.
-Created and maintained all game documentation.Other
-Designed, implemented, and interpreted user testing, and communicated results.

As a Game Designer at Tuxedo games, I pitched and concepted new features, performed research for the game, and communicated across all members of the team.I worked to ensure that game mechanics aligned with the overall user experience and intended learning outcomes while remaining fun, engaging, and delightful.

Other
-Researched other age appropriate apps to understand the market, and reported findings to the team.
-Collected user feedback from testers and shared with the team, and shared results with the team.

Core Design
-Designed minigames and overall flow of gameplay.
-Concepted new gameplay features.
-Concepted new player feedback features to keep gameplay fun and engaging.
-Ensured game mechanics aligned to learning outcomes and overall experience.

Game Design Writing

You can find some of my writing about game design here. Please watch this space as I update it with recent writing.

TTRPG Writing

I write for tabletop games, including 5E and original systems. Below are links to personal titles, please contact me for samples or information about further work.

Game Design Skills: Funsmith Fireside Chats

Spartie-Cast with Dr. Robby Rattan

Get in touch! Send me an e-mail or connect with me on social media. I am currently available for both design consulting and writing work.

Fox 8 News

Spectrum News