Annie are you ok
You've been hit by a smooth criminal

Annie Grudeva

Lead Designer

Genre: Third Person Multiplayer Farming Sandbox
Engine: Unity

Southfield

Combine cartoony crops with chaotic effects, and customise your farm with fun toys and machines to automate your harvest. Whether you’re a solo explorer, or you're looking for a new destination to play with friends - Southfield is the place to be!

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2076210/Southfield/

Key Responsibilities:

  • Supervised the sandbox system design (weather systems, economy, XP and Progression, situational design, emergent gameplay)

  • Worked with production on a game design macro to move from pre-production into production.

  • Worked with the team to break down system design goals into actionable components for team members.

  • Designed the game pillars

  • Worked with engineering and production on establishing a design integration pipeline

  • Worked with art and production on establishing level design integration pipeline

  • Worked with management on team growth and development plans

  • Designed an AI Island Director

Unannounced

AAA ARPG intended for PC/Console. Working with a well-known IP.

Engine: Unreal

  • Assisting teams with balancing, considering necessary metrics, and informing about development restrictions.

  • Designed the game economy and managed the integration of narrative elements, ensuring a seamless blend of storytelling and gameplay.

  • Designed and overseeing the implementation of multiplayer components.

  • Designed the meta, game progression as well as scoped the various playstyles.

Genre: Single Player First-Person RPG
Engine: Unity
Platforms: PC, Xbox One

Alongside humans, the world is filled with intelligent mythological creatures, referred to as Mytha (Creatures), living as part of society. Discrimination and inequality is rife as those creatures are assigned menial roles in society or treated more as objects than sentient beings. The ruling class has magic, but the oppressed have had enough. The tensions are high and trouble is brewing.

Elegos

Elegos, a first-person immersive RPG where every single action matters. A single-player, open-world RPG set approximately 330 BCE in Ancient Greece during the time of Alexander the Great. 

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1882300/Elegos/

Key Responsibilities:

  • Collaborated closely with the game director, art, and programming teams to ensure a cohesive and immersive player experience.

  • Oversaw the creation of detailed design documentation, ensuring clear communication of concepts to the team.

  • Developed and iterated on core gameplay mechanics, ensuring they were fun, balanced, and aligned with the game vision.

  • Worked with narrative designers to integrate story elements seamlessly into gameplay, enhancing player engagement.

  • I worked closely cross-discipline iterating through gameplay features; player abilities, combat, quest system, level design and more.

  • Designing and prototyping physics based player abilities and puzzles in an open world setting.

  • I worked on balancing and directing development of the character controller; grounded movement including jumping, movement and camera behaviour.

  • Developed the internal modding system and oversaw its integration, as well as integrated the modding community’s feedback.

Achievements:

  • Successfully led the design team through Alpha development, resulting in a cohesive and captivating first-person RPG experience.

  • Endorsed by the Modding community.

Office Chair Death Match

  • Designed and implemented mechanics for stealing back or destroying stolen office chairs.

  • Developed scenarios where players gave annoying co-workers their comeuppance in an HR-authorized Office Chair Death Match.

  • Created engaging top-down, pixel art racing game environments for Office Chair DeathMatch (OCDM).

  • Developed character roles, including a new employee participating in a mandatory office chair racing tournament.

  • Designed competitive gameplay where players fought and destroyed other employees' chairs.

  • Implemented a system where players earned chair pieces to repair their chairs after winning fights.

  • Developed rules for swapping chairs, allowing winners to exchange chairs with eligible losers.

  • Ensured the tournament reflected its importance in the company’s culture.

  • Utilized office items creatively to design tracks, power-ups, and other game elements across various company floors.

Genre: First-Person Musical Puzzle
Engine: Unreal
Platforms: PC, Xbox

SoYL or Story of Your Life - a walking sim puzzle game where you wander in an abandoned world that’s falling apart, following different melodies and trying to connect the memories.
The player discovers a melody and follows it until they find an object. Then they can continue to follow the memory until the object is returned to its correct place.

Story of Your Life

Story of your life is a personal project I’ve been working on to help me cope with the loss of my dad and grandmother.

I found grief to be amazingly isolating, so I tried to find a way to connect with people and explain to them what the feeling looked and sounded like.

Key Responsibilities:

  • Designed and built an open-world environment in-engine (e.g., landscape, location of encounters, landmarks, multiple forms of progression gating).

  • Concepted and prototyped key gameplay moments.

  • Designed the game's mechanics and systems.

  • Designed and whiteboxed environmental musical puzzles in the open-world.

  • Implemented environmental storytelling (e.g., set dressing, notice boards).

  • Created the narrative concept and 4 NPCs.

  • Wrote and implemented character dialogue.

Easy Jet Why not?

Inspire Serendipity.

Using the 'Why not?' ATL campaign I developed series of immersive experiences to inspire people to be more spontaneous and explore the continent with EasyJet.

I created an immersive event where people could 'stumble upon' another country and even a 360 video to explore our creation.

Key Responsibilities:

  • Developed moodboards, design concept and plans.

  • Worked with designers, creative technologists, fabricators, and engineers to craft a unique and playful interactive immersive experience.

Lara Croft GO

The team at Square Enix needed a campaign that captured the imagination of consumers and would ultimately lead to downloads of the game.

Upon the game's release, we orchestrated an immersive experience where a tube station was transformed into a level reminiscent of Tomb Raider. We featured four "Lara Croft cosplayers" equipped with iPads, allowing the public to participate in this interactive adventure - Lara Croft on the GO. This unique experience coincided with a callout in the Metro newspaper and was promoted on their social channels. Consumers were encouraged to explore the transformed station and engage with the Lara Croft cosplayers by whispering a secret word to them.

Key Responsibilities:

  • Designed the whole experience.

  • Collaborated with multidisciplinary teams of artists, designers, and stagehands to craft an experience that reflects the game’s gameplay and storytelling.

  • Used my experience to create memorable moments and drive player engagement.

RED CROSS Run for your life

Created a game for the Red Cross to raise awareness about the struggles of refugees. The game could be downloaded only once and played only once as you only have one life.

I worked on the design and helped the media team to select the footage.
The game itself was developed by a contractor.

You cannot understand someone’s experience until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes. So what about 3.500 miles?
Miles for Refugees was a virtual charity run, from Syria to the UK.
A game so immersive and so challenging that it made people want to quit. It also worked by getting friends and family to sponsor you by pledging a donation amount for every day the player survives. The challenge was to make the right decisions in real-time, 24 hours a day.

We created an immersive experience that can help people realize the severity of the situation and relate to what refugees and asylum seekers must endure to come to the UK. An experience that they can live, rather than just watch, read or hear about.

I'm experienced with...

Design & Creative

  • Systems Design

  • 3 C's Design

  • Multiplayer Design

  • Quest & Mission Design

  • Economy Design

  • Investment Design

  • AI Design

  • Game Balance

  • Player Progression

  • Emergent Gameplay

  • Procedural Content Generation

Management

  • Team Collaboration

  • Design Management

  • Team Leadership

  • Cross-team Communication

  • Coaching & Mentoring

  • Project management

  • New business and pitching

  • Presentations

Development

  • Unreal / Blueprints

  • Unity

  • Rapid Prototyping

  • Paper Prototyping

  • Scripting

  • Miro / Draw.io

  • Agile Development

About

Hey, my name is Annie Grudeva, and I am the Lead Designer at Radical Forge working on Southfield and [NDA THE SIZE OF WAR AND PEACE]. Before that, I was a Lead Designer at Perpetual Games, working on Elegos.

I am enthusiastic about building great teams, systems design, invisible tutorials, accessibility and firmly convinced the best games are yet to be made. I’ve been in love with games for as long as I can remember—one of my earliest childhood memories is sitting with my dad and playing Doom (it was the early 90s, don’t judge!).

While I specialize in game design I have a firm understanding of process, pipelines, production, programming, and art as I believe it’s essential to know how my teammates work in order to support them and achieve the best work.

I also have founded and maintaining PixAll - a database with the aim to list organisations, articles, videos and conference talks that offer advice on diversity, inclusivity and accessibility for the games industry.

I also mentor through Limit Break and VGA as well as support Save Point, London Game Festival and Special Effect.

 

A C H I E V E M E N T S

E D U C A T I O N
Creative 2014-2015 //
School of Communication Arts, London

BA Communication 2009-2012 //
Cardiff University