Brandon Smith
Technical Game Designer
I am a Technical Game Designer who treats gameplay systems as iterative design problems. Across 20+ projects, I have specialized in building and refining core mechanics through rigorous testing, proactively restructuring architecture to ensure long-term stability over temporary fixes. Having led design on cross-functional teams ranging from 4 to 70+ developers, my focus is always on clarity, rapid iteration, and scalable feature growth.
My work bridges the gap between design and software engineering. I focus on implementing modular systems grounded in SOLID principles, directly empowering development teams to safely experiment, collaborate, and build features efficiently.
Projects
Enemy Designer
Led multiple small teams across EGD's largest studio, with a focus on Enemy Design, Enemy Balancing, and System Mechanics.
✅Balanced enemy archetypes and tuned combat mechanics for readability and fair challenge.
✅Iterated on mechanics through testing, restructuring systems when friction appeared.
✅Collaborated with QA & designers to refine player feedback loops and telegraphing.
✅Produced data-driven documentation to support future balancing and scaling.
Technical Designer
Built and maintained core progression and save systems, emphasizing data integrity, modular design, and designer-friendly frameworks.
✅Designed scalable save/load architecture for player state across multiple scenes.
✅Unified subsystem communication (progression, collectibles, world data) into extendable frameworks.
✅Implemented robust systems with safeguards against corruption and predictable behavior.
✅Aligned mechanics with narrative and design goals, supporting designer experimentation.
Game Designer
Led cross-functional feature development and designed scalable mechanics, emphasizing player momentum, spline-based architecture, and developer-friendly design frameworks.
✅Acted as Game Design Lead across sprints to drive feature iteration, evaluation, and approval.
✅Created a modular "Wrong Way" system using spline pathways to calculate player orientation.
✅Built a dynamic "guiding light" mechanic that illuminates environments to pilot player navigation.
✅Developed an elevation-based spline track framework to establish a repeatable level design pipeline.