About

I'm Kobi (they/them). I'm a nonbinary, mixed-race, neurodivergent game designer with 2 cats and a lot of passion for making games and other things people can interact with. I consider myself a generalist game designer, but some areas of focus are prototyping, systems design, game feel, and UX.

I like programming and building things hands-on in a game engine, and I also like working within constraints, experimenting to create something fun and novel. Whether I'm making an entirely new game mechanic or trying out a different way of using existing systems in a game, I'm happiest when I'm prototyping ideas to find out what's compelling and what isn't quickly and work towards the best version of a game.

Systems design is a powerful lens that helps me create a better player experience. I have a strong grasp of how systems work in terms of inflows, outflows, and loops, and I use that to design satisfying gameplay. By moving the handles on a game system (changing numbers or causal links), I can tweak the player's experience of that system to create a greater sense of fairness, which players and designers often call balance. With an understanding of a game's systems, I can also predict how a certain change might affect the dynamics of the game.

In order to be an effective systems designer, I've become very good with spreadsheets. I've used Google Sheets and Excel to model probabilities, automate json and csv formatting, find averages and percentiles filtered on certain player traits from large datasets, calculate theoretical inflows of resources based on sources, and more.

I'm fascinated by the ways that systems intersect with game feel and UX through the lens of communicating information. The ways that players interact and receive feedback on their input are opportunities to communicate intuitively and create immersion while also conveying weight and emotion. I think it's incredibly cool when games tell me something and I manage to use it without even thinking about it, like when you hit something breakable and it sounds crunchier than something that isn't, or how the arc of your sword swing shows you the range, or when slow movement and screen shake convey how enormous an enemy is despite being contained on a small screen.

Perhaps my greatest strength as a game designer is my communication skills. I create documentation that concisely and effectively explains how something should work and why. I collaborate well with other developers, listening and synthesizing ideas, contributing where useful and not pushing or clinging to my own ideas. I give constructive feedback that helps others see things from a new perspective without dismissing their work, and I receive feedback with an open mind.

If you want to know more about me, please get in touch! I'd love to talk to you about design, the games industry, or any of the games I'm currently playing or have played recently, which include Book of Hours, Sable, Potion Craft: Alchemist Simulator, Return of the Obra Dinn, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Brawl Stars, and variant sudokus from Cracking the Cryptic.