Hello! I’m Marcelo Costa!

I’m a Game Designer with over ten years of experience in the game industry – I’ve worked on all manner of studios, from smaller indie and medium-sized studios to Triple A studios, having shipped multiple games on Mobile, Console/PC and Virtual Reality. As a Game Designer, my main areas of focus are Gameplay Design and System Design, with some experience in Narrative Design and Level Design as well.

Game Design Proficiencies

Gameplay Design

• Designed the Superman Transformation feature for Fortnite’s Super Season, creating a new whole kit of abilities to deliver the Superman Fantasy in a Battle Royale match, with special care done to build a new flight model that matched the iconic sense of speed and power of the character
• Designed and scripted the Mariah Carey Winterfest event, which included both the day-by-day progression of the event as well as the musical moment and all the gameplay features related for that special event.
• Designed and implemented new vehicle systems with a focus on exploring new vehicle-based gameplay for Fortnite’s Wrecked season.
• Designed and implemented the Fallout items as part of the Wrecked season, working closely with the IP partners to make sure to capture the iconic gameplay of those items in Fortnite.
• Revamped and redesigned winter gameplay items for the Winterfest event, focusing on keeping their core identities while highlighted their gameplay goals in Fortnite’s Hunters season
• Designed and implemented updates to many of the legacy features present in the Chapter 1 to bring them back to the current game for Fortnite’s Chapter 4 OG season
• Designed the gameplay items pirate themed expansion for Wonderbox, creating a new fishing mechanic for the game that players could use on their own creations.
• Designed the player’s gameplay kit for Tin & Kuna, a 3D action platformer, exploring the possibility space and abilities combos.
• Designed the entirety of a rhythm gameplay system based on Orchestral music, using the inspiration of maestro hand movements for Magichestra, a VR game.
• Directed the game design of various prototypes for validating gameplay mechanics during the pre-production and production stages.

System Design

• Designed new quality of life system improvements, endgame PVP feature revamps, endgame progression systems, new endgame content and live-ops support systems on Looney Tunes: World of Mayhem, a Mobile Turn Based RPG.
• Designed the gameplay systems of various mobile hypercasual games in different genres, such as Puzzle, Action and Runner.
• Responsible for tuning the gameplay systems on both the player’s character and enemy NPCs and AI, collaborating with the programming team for the creation of tools to improve the fine-tuning of such features.

Narrative Design

• Created the initial narrative draft and pitch for Holocrimes,a detective-style AR adventure game.
• Developed characters and locations descriptions and plot synopsis for a 2D Narrative Platformer.
• Wrote all the character dialogue, environment barks and speech for NPCs for a 2D Narrative Platformer.
• Created the working script for 6+ animated cutscenes, and accompanied the artists through the process of creation, giving directions and reviewing the previews.
• Collaborated with external specialists for writing narrative based on sensitive topics, such as mental health issues.

Level Design

• Created 15+ levels for Tin & Kuna, a 3D action platformer using Unity and collaborated on the design of an in-house level creation tool for the project, together with the programming team.
• Made use of music/timing tools to create 5 stages for Magichestra, a rhythm based VR game.
• Defined the procedural systems and created level blocks for level generation in four different mobile hypercasual games.
• Designed and reviewed levels collaboratively with other Level Designers for a 2D Narrative Platformer.

Technical Proficiency

• Seven years of experience using the Unity Engine and its different features.
• Three years of experience using the Unreal Engine and programming using Blueprints.
• Game Design expertise on Mobile, Console/PC and Virtual Reality platforms.
• Programming background using C#
• Experienced in creating documentation using wiki-style tools and graphic tools for diagrams, visual proposals and animations.
• Experienced with creating and using design spreadsheets for system features, balancing and live-ops content creation.

Communication and Collaboration

• I’m a Scrum Alliance® Certified Scrum Product Owner® (CSPO®).
• Experienced in organizing Agile teams using production tools such as Trello and Jira.
• Took the role of facilitator in regular meetings for the Game Design team, helping the collaboration between different game designers and tackling potential problems.
• Participated in the creation of playtesting sessions, collaborating on the interview script and acted as an observant on the tests. 
• Helped the other Game Designers in the Team via mentoring on technical points and knowledge sharing.
• Created workshops for the team on development tools, such as a level creation tool on Unity that we made in-house, and Unity’s features, such as Cinemachine and Timeline.
• Participated in local game development events frequently, both as a participant and as a presenter, creating presentations about topics in Game Design.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE IN GAMES

Gameplay Designer

Epic Games

2023 – Current

• I’ve joined Epic as part of the Gameplay Design team for Fortnite’s Battle Royale mode, working in creating gameplay features for new seasons of the game.
• My main responsibilities in this role were to be the design vision holder of my features, defining the design and being responsible of the Blueprint implementation in engine, working closely with different teams to guide them and deliver a high quality feature, with a keen eye on the gameplay experience and the state of the game as a whole.

System Designer

Aquiris

2021 – 2023

• My first position in Aquiris was as part of the team working primarily on systems and features for Looney Tunes: World of Mayhem, a mobile character collecting RPG developed in partnership with Scopely. After that I joined the team to work on Wonderbox, an action RPG with user generated tools and content.
• My main responsibilities in this role was to work on system and quality of life improvements to the game, propose and design new features, collaborate with the development of new tools for the team and work on live-ops systems to increase content output for the game.

Game Designer

Black River Studios

2018 – 2021

• I joined Black River Studios as a Game Designer, and worked on multiple projects including Virtual Reality, Console/PC and Mobile.
• My main responsibilities in this role were to design gameplay systems, collaborate with the other Game Designers and the project teams and tackling level design and narrative design for the games of the studio.

Indie Studio Co-Founder

Dreamkid Studio

2015 – 2018

• Co-Founder of the game development studio as the main game developer and game designer for a number of games for mobile devices.
• My main responsibilities in this role were to work on the game design of the multiple games we developed, and programming most of the gameplay related features, such as player actions, Enemy AI and level design.