Donuts!
Lead Game Designer
June 2024 - May 2025
Donuts! is an arcade racing and skateboarding game. A tribute to the Dreamcast-era arcade classics like Crazy Taxi and Tony Hawk Pro Skater, Donuts! has players making donuts by performing tricks and then racing to deliver them as quickly as they can.
The game follows Mony, a first-generation Cambodian-American who attempts to revitalize their family's donut business by starting a delivery service. The player must perform tricks with the food truck—ollies, flips, and the titular donut—in order to fulfil these orders and then race to the delivery point to recieve points. Try to rack up as many points as you can during a day of work! Interwoven with the high-speed, high-skill gameplay, the game tells a heartwarming story about family legacies, immigration, and the Cambodian-American experience.
Donuts was created as part of USC's Advanced Games Project program, our schools games capstone class. I led a team of 5 game designers to conquer our game's unique design challenges. I was the only sophomore selected as a game design lead that year.
As a Team Leader I was responsible for:
- Managing task allocation and sprint planning for my team.
- Providing design feedback and critique on my teams work, and communicating with other teams on blockers and their needs.
- Creating documentation for the director and USC faculty to keep them updated on game design progress and request feedback.
As a Game Designer I was responsible for:
- Fleshing out core systems, specifically the "recieve order, perform tricks, deliver" game loop.
- Developing skate trick system and cooresponding score system.
- Designing delivery missions for each zone of the game map.