Daniel Tvete - Game Designer

Welcome to my Portfolio!

I’m a Game Designer with a background in mobile games design and have worked on successful titles with over 100m downloads such as Coin Dozer. Additionally I have experience doing freelance game and level design for puzzle and match-3 games, and an extensive background in Quality Assurance.
While my primary passion within design lies in UI/UX, I have experience designing core game loops, secondary game systems, monetization systems, data and balance sheets, monitoring game health, and rapid prototyping. I am experienced working in both scrum and agile environments.

Unannounced Game (2023)

Game Circus llc

My main role on this project was designing and implementing a variety of core game systems and features while collaborating closely with the development team, including the product team and other designers. I was directly involved with designing ‘project-agnostic’ features, core game loop iterations and improvements, social login flows, several UI/UX improvements and helped analyze and deliver actionable items from several usertesting sessions.

One of the biggest challenges with this project was that this is a server-based game with a focus on the dev and design team to be able to make live updates and changes to the game without requiring the players to update the game, as well as avoiding causing bugs or errors to users when we push the live changes. Several of the features and data sheets I designed had to take this in account, adding another layer of complexity to their under-the-hood functionality.

Notable contributions:

Created a ‘game-agnostic’ pop-up and promotion feature that allowed the design and product team to easily customize what and when pop-ups, IAPs and free offers can appear throughout the game.
Designed the logic flow of a social login system.
Several improvements to the UI/UX of the core game loop to improve player usability and communication.
Performed deep-dive research into game flow, game balance and UI/UX of critically successful competitive games on the market, delivering actionable items to help boost early-game retention and engagement.
Collaborative prototyping with a small strike team to explore various improvements to our secondary game loops.

Rumble Match (2021)

Project Flight School llc

Worked as a Freelance Designer with primary focus on creating new and rebalancing existing Match-3 levels.

Notable contributions:

Designed 20+ levels.
Rebalanced 100+ levels.
Provided general design feedback on core game loop and monetization.

Shark Tank Tycoon (2021)

Game Circus llc, Sony Entertainment

Shark Tank Tycoon was a collaboration project with Sony Pictures on a game adaptation for the international hit TV show Shark Tank. My main role on this project was assisting the Lead Designer with various tasks ranging from making misc improvements to the game’s LTV, supporting the implementation of new in-game events to implementing the entrepreneur pitch minigame.

Notable contributions:

Implemented and balanced 2 in-game events
Collaborated with Lead Designer on designing the core entrepreneur pitch minigame
Designed the spreadsheets and dialog system for the entrepreneur pitch minigame
Helped write dialog for the entrepreneur pitch minigame

Coin Dozer (2020)

Game Circus llc

Coin Dozer Sweepstakes was the first project I was involved in as an associate designer. My primary role in the project was initially to assist the Lead Designer with various smaller design tasks. The implementation of the Seasonal Pass feature was my first major feature implementation where I was directly collaborating with programmers, artists and QA for its release.

Notable contributions:

Designed and helped implement the Seasonal Pass feature.
Responsible for rebalancing and pushing 13 live events.

Responsible for a series of improvements to the UI/UX of the Fortune Wheel system, improving the userfacing of the monetization aspects of the Seasonal Pass and several misc. main game HUD improvements and QOL changes from a Design aspect.

Other Experience & Projects

Rapid Prototyping (2022)
Game Circus llc

Worked as a designer on a 4-person team to create several rapid prototypes in Unity within a 12-week period, spanning genres such as merge, TD, action shooter and AR simulation game. The goal of these prototypes was to aid design research on game mechanics and UX for potential future games for Game Circus.

My main role on these projects was taking our initial rough ideas and turning them into core game loop interactions, playtesting and providing feedback during development, as well as tweaking the game’s input values until we had a game flow that represented our vision. I would take the team’s input and feedback during development and determine if and how we could incorporate it into our prototypes to improve them further. I created mockups and wireframes during the pre-production of each project to ensure we were all aligned on the ideas, loops and interactions. I also designed the UI/UX structures and layouts.

Worked as Design support during pre-production of an unannounced Idler game in collaboration with an undisclosed 3rd party and a 2nd-party team (RM2 Digital).

My role was attending daily meetings, staying up to date with the progress, supporting the 2nd party team with any design review and feedback in the project, and wireframes and mockups during pre-production.

Design Support (2022)
Game Circus llc

Design Support (2022)
Project Flight School llc

Worked as Design support during pre-production of an unannounced Idler game in collaboration with an undisclosed 3rd party and a 2nd-party team (RM2 Digital).

My role was attending daily meetings, staying up to date with the progress, supporting the 2nd party team with any design review and feedback in the project, and wireframes and mockups during pre-production.