Key Art by Andrew Tsai.
<aside> 🎸 - Role: Producer, Designer, Business Operator (many hats!)
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I founded D-CELL GAMES with the game’s co-director Andrew Tsai. I manage + schedule the project and studio’s day-to-day operations, and contributed game design (as the game designer for the ARCADE MODE and lead chart designer), and community management support.
UNBEATABLE is an indie game about an indie band! Talk your way through trouble as you explore vibrant locales. Fight your way through exciting arcade-perfect rhythm setpieces, featuring an original soundtrack by Peak Divide.
Trailer edited by co-directors RJ Lake and Andrew Tsai, with work done across the board on it from the whole team. I helped with release management in coordination with Playstack, and also made the chart that is used for rhythm gameplay in the video.
The core staff + several of the game’s contributing artists and contractors at MAGFest 2023. I’m the one with the bunny ears!
A example of one of our milestone timelines in Notion.
I’ve even taken part in coordinating in-person meetings amongst the core staff and business partners.
Following completion of a prototype developed by Andrew, I worked with him to search for potential collaborators on our anime music-inspired project. This led to an assembly of D-CELL’s core staff, all of whom are currently still a part of the team today.
I fit amongst the team as the sole producer of the project up until late 2021, where I was joined by co-producer Rachel Lake. As this game’s producer, I coordinate dailies, weekly meetings, documentation, timelines, and arrange the project’s Notion database (the game previously was organized using both Trello and Asana). If an engineer needs a spec sheet, I’m the right person to deliver that. If someone is checking in their builds, I’m the one reviewing that and their current timeline on relevant tasks. With the directors, I help write, review, and deliver task write-ups to the necessary assignees, coordinating with each person to determine a theoretical estimate for the project to begin properly tracking it.
A example of a wiki page I compiled, comprising of visual assets made for the game’s KS campaign.
To allow D-CELL to legally operate as a studio, I established the studio in late 2019 with Andrew, serving as its business operating agent. I currently supervise studio finances (with the help of a contracted accounting firm), payroll, recruitment, business conversations with third-parties, and am responsible for a lot of the legal paperwork that makes sure we are not breaking the law (contrary to what UNBEATABLE’s characters do in the game!)
The game reached its initial goal within the first 15 hours of the campaign.
UNBEATABLE - A game where music is illegal and you do crimes
With the team, I researched, built, and organized the game’s massively successful Kickstarter, and was involved in drafts of the campaign posts, the assembly of the page itself, and both the marketing and production schedule for the demo release that accompanied with it, the standalone release “UNBEATABLE [white label]”.
I also operated the game’s “SLACKER BACKER” campaign storefront, which ran from July 2021-December 2022. From the front-facing, player-side of these crowdfunding campaigns, to the back-end operations for D-CELL GAMES, we made sure everything was as best as we could possibly pitch with our limited resources at the time.
<aside> 📰 The campaign received overwhelmingly positive reception and had coverage on The Verge, Polygon, and Famitsu. The [white label] demo received widespread acclaim with 96% Overwhelmingly Positive reviews on Steam, and was listed as editor picks for various publications’ Game of the Year 2021 by PC Gamer and Collider.
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My experience with this project’s crowdfunding campaign allowed me to provide consultation for the now-successful Bits & Bops campaign, of which I was given “Special Thanks” for in the game’s credits.
Bits & Bops - a collection of original rhythm minigames
STEAM STORE PAGE LINK TO UNBEATABLE [white label]
UNBEATABLE [white label], the demo released alongside the game’s Kickstarter, continued to receive updates and community support, with me helming community management, patch deployment, and bug reports from players alongside my co-producer.