Jeff Byers /// Designer

I’ll get around to adding my experiences working on High on Knife soon enough. Don’t you worry. I’m gonna get it done. Real soon. Maybe tomorrow. I don’t know for sure. I might have some time this weekend. I’ll have to check my calendar to be sure, though.

This project is one of my favorite experiences I had the opportunity to work on. I was the Lead Designer on a small team that included an Artist, Producer, Writer, Programmer and two Level Designers.

I was tasked with taking the core mechanics from Infinity and designing a "Dungeon Crawler" style game. The game includes six levels that spanned Disney, Star Wars and Marvel properties. It also included sidekicks that can be leveled up and equipped with different gear. AND - a random level generator!

I was responsible for writing and maintaining the design document that included: 2-D maps for each of the levels, boss AI design, loot tables and unlockable items.

One of my favorite memories working on this game was meeting with legendary Producer Bill Roper. We spent the day reviewing the game design and bouncing ideas off each other. After the conversation Bill was excited by the current state of the design. It was an honor to get his approval. Bill's previous experience includes: Warcraft, StarCraft and Diablo.

I had the honor of being the Lead Designer on the final play set for Disney Infinity. I led a team of 10 Level Designers to create 13 levels of diverse 2-D & 3-D game play.

I was responsible for writing and maintaining the design document, creating the core mechanics and creating the mission flow.

One of my favorite experiences of working on this project was pitching the initial game design to Angus MacLane, one of the Directors of the Finding Dory movie. During the pitch Angus made references to various games ranging from Starfox to Metal Gear Solid - I was a little shocked to find out I was chatting with a fellow gamer! His knowledge of gaming made it easier to convey concepts, which lead to a fun and productive conversation. Angus was pleased with the direction of the play set. He had no major changes to add to the game. 

I was the Lead Designer for the Toy Box Games for Disney Infinity. This included a Tower Defense game and a Dungeon Crawler game.

For the Tower Defense game, the team wanted to combine tower defense strategy while still maintaining a healthy dose of action elements.

I designed the core game play for the mode, which included 10 trap types and I also created 2-D maps for all 10 different levels.

The dungeon crawler was played from the 3/4 view similar to Diablo. I created over 20 dungeon maps that featured puzzles, platforming, combat encounters and treasure locations.

This was one of the more difficult projects I worked on. Managing two different teams and creating a design for two significantly different games modes was a challenging task. In the end, the team created a fun tower defense game and laid the foundation for a dungeon crawler that was huge improvement for Infinity 3.0. 

Monsters University was one of the pack in games that came with Disney Infinity starter set.

I was heavily involved with developing the core game play for the play set, which includes unique mechanics like sneak/scare, pranking and paintball. I was responsible for scripting the game play for the paintball missions as well as documenting and tracking the mission flow.

Cars 2 was a blast to work on! I was tasked with creating a game mode that would compliment the existing game play. With the help of a programmer I began to prototype what later would become Attack Mode.

I set out to create a fast paced arcade-style mode with a lot of explosions! Attack Mode is a race against the clock where the player must destroy enemies to keep playing. I knew the mode became a hit when designers were stopping by my desk to play the latest levels.

One of my favorite memories was watching game enthusiast website Giant Bomb play one of my levels. I was very happy when I saw how much fun they were having with the mode I helped create.

Link to the video can be found here: GiantBomb 

Note: Game play for my mode can be seen at 04:19.

Toy Story 3 was Avalanche Software's most beloved games, both by the members of the development team and video game community.

I was involved with the initial design meetings that helped shape the backbone of the Toy Box portion of the game.

Later in the project I adapted the game to the Wii console and controller.

After finishing The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, I was asked to help another team finish Ultimate Band for the Nintendo Wii.

I helped layout game play/note patterns for several of the songs. I also provided feedback for improving the game play for other tracks in the game.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian for the Nintendo DS was the first game I worked on for Disney Interactive.

The team created an RPG with an interesting twist on turn-based mechanics. During the combat sequences, there were no menus to button through, instead the combat was entirely driven by the touch screen. When a character was ready to attack, the player must compete a quick mini game to determine how much damage is rendered to the enemy.

I was responsible for designing maps, combat mini games and scripting the game play. In fact, all of the scripting was done by me and one other designer during the final month of development. The scripting included enemy patrol points, dialog triggers, level transitions and pick ups.

Tom and Jerry Tales was a Nintendo DS game  developed in a quick 3 month period.

Since the development cycle was so short, the team decided to create a simple game that focused on Tom chasing Jerry.

I helped design the levels and mini-game sequences. The mini-games were heavily inspired by a DS import called Eyeshield 21 Max Devil Power!

I also created story boards to help the animators develop the cenimatic cutscene sequences.

This game was developed for the Nintendo DS and was based on a Cartoon Network show about a J-Pop duo called Hi Hi Puffy Amiyumi.

I was one of the designers responsible for writing the game pitch that landed the contract for the studio.

The initial design wanted to recreate a game that was inspired by classic Konami arcade beat 'em ups like: The Simpsons, X-Men and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

I created 2-D maps for all of the levels. These maps were then given to artists to create the assets. Once the level layouts were created, I used a proprietary tool to script the levels with enemies, pickups, and breakable objects.

Jeremy McGrath Supercross world is my first design credit! This game was created for the Playstation 2 and the Nintendo Gamecube.

Although, this game wasn't well received, I'm proud of the experiences and things I learned about the game development process during the game's production.

I was responsible for designing and implementing five of the race tracks. We used a program called Leveller to create height maps that were then processed into the game engine to create the track topology.