Marie-Andrée Forest
Game Designer
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I work at the intersection of technology, interactions and visual storytelling, bringing together complex systems and evocative worlds.
Drawing from my game design and architectural background, I approach level and world design with a meticulous eye for spatial dynamics and environmental storytelling.
I'm particularly interested in the different stances from which poeple look at the world, and how they converge, conflict, and evolve over time.
2023 - Today
A probability-based walking simulator, where the rooms you explore shift and adapt to your behaviour.
Here I really delved into Unreal Blueprints to built all the systems, from the savegame to the probability & interactions.
2022 (ongoing)
A first-person "horror" game, with a focus on environment traversal and puzzles.
I make extensive use of Unreal PCG for the wall panels placement and randomization, automatically generating rooms from simple volumes.
March 2022 - March 2023
A dress up game for all ages
I designed multiple new areas, a few features, improved main game mechanics and items UI, designed items & clothing collections, video storyboards... This game is massive and offered so many challenges!
2021
A full office tower floor, in standalone virtual reality, with an additional video deliverable. All image captures are real-time in engine.
2017 & 2018
Two fully voiced, short point & clic games set in the historical snowstorm of March 1947 in Val d'Or & Amos, with the fictional intrigue of a stolen Harfang jewel.
This was part of my exploration toward indie development, jumping in for a few days of frantic development, helping on a bit of everything.
2012 - 2021
Twine & Contruct 2 game experiments, mostly recounting dreams.
This was a pivotal time for me, as I started learning tools to develop games autonomously and bridge the gap between games and architecture.
It is also at this time that I prototyping with Blender, Unity, then Unreal and the Oculus DK2, and many more...
2009 - 2011
An action RPG set in the world of Gothicus, as a direct sequel to Dungeon Hunter.
This was the first big title I had a lead designer role on. The challenges were numerous, from character progression & skills, to 3C, to level design, to the online campaign system, boss fights...
2009
An action RPG where you take the role of a resurected prince and fight an evil queen, in the land of Gothicus.
I took on increasingly intricate tasks, from testing, to cutscene events scripting, and custom camera movements.
I assisted technical game designers any way I could.
2008
A Hunting & Fishing game. Travel through multiple lands, tracking small and big games while avoiding detection, both from your prey and your predators.
This game being a sequel (with the designer of the original available for insights), it was a great way to tackle the mutiple tasks of creating dialogs, levels, fauna and flora, while adjusting to the team's progress at all time.
Here are a few projects that are noteworthy, but I wanted to exclude from the main timeline, to avoid drowning it with small experiments.
They are a good representation of what I do between projects or when I want to learn to integrate new skills. Sometimes I start with a question like "why don't I always use really easy to use engines? Would this be worth doing in code instead of visual scripting; where is the limit?"
2024
A recursive urban landscape where you have to find your way up
I am testing level design approaches in Unreal for rapid prototyping.
2024
A prototype of a game where you play a bird, with an undisclosed main mechanic. What I can say tho, is that a murmur of follower starlings help you solve some puzzles through numbers, and a bit of strategy.
Follower NPCs learn from the player , so the murmur's composition and behaviour slowly builds and varies over time, without the player's overt control. Or so the design states.
2022
A guessing game where you have to interpret equivocal AI generated pictures (DALL-E) and associate them with an haiku-like randomized sentence. Ex: "Clouds drift, sky's _Split_"
2022
A simple skate game set in urban environments, where you tap to push forward and jump or duck to avoid being slowed down by obstacles.
I used chatGPT4 to make the first draft of the game mechanics (JS), then moved to correcting and complementing it, creating the pixel art, then port it to an Adafruit PyBadge.
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2016 - Today
Synth music, noise & soundscapes, that I sometimes use as OST for my games.
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Magic Soda (Game OST)
FlatwormGirl (Game OST)
Neutral Panic
