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Hello!

Darina Koycheva Profile Picture

My name is Darina Koycheva and I am a game design student with interest in level design and technical art. My passion for games comes from my love for puzzles and challenges. Turns out making puzzles is even more fun than solving them!

 

Spaces which give opportunity for player creativity as much as they tell a good story are the current focus of my study and research. 

Being able to make those fun and challenging experiences along with stunning real-time visuals is what makes the cherry of the cake, and such is my goal in all of my game projects.

Spring [WIP]

As a part of our second year me and four of my classmates are working on a game demo of an exploration RPG game.

My role in the project is  'the engine person'. I overlook all parts of the pipeline, develop tools, shaders, animation blueprints, AI and effects, as well as model props such as the yard wall and gate, the bridges, lanterns and stairs.

The learning curve has been amazing the satisfaction of seeing the project go from a grey box to these final stages has been super rewarding. The development began in February 2022 and will finish in May, when we would have to submit the final trailer for our university assignment.

If you would like to follow more of our process, come visit our Polycount and Unreal Forum threads!

Spring

Abandoned Throne

As a part of a level design brief, i created the Abandoned Throne project. Inspired by games like Uncharted 4 and Horizon Zero Dawn, i wanted to tell a story of  a mysterious place, with a lot of verticality and room for exploration and surprise.

I have included 2 videos - one of the greybox phase and another after the vertical slice was finished. Working on this helped understand the development pipeline a lot better and forced me to think about both visuals and gameplay. 

If you are interested in playing this level, get in touch and i can provide you with a link!

Abandoned Throne

Across the Sea

Across the Sea is a small platformer game idea i developed for university, mixing blueprints and materials to create a game mechanic.

 

I learned a lot about material parameter collections, casting for UI Widgets and having separate system managers for the different logic in the game.

 

In this case I made an actor component BP_CrystalManager and added it to the Game Mode. It counts how many of each colour crystals are in the scene and updates the widget accordingly.

AcrossTheSea
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