The Maddening Mercy
Project Type: Student Team Project
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Timeline: September 2025 - April 2026
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Location: Redmond, WA
The Maddening Mercy is a weird west-themed visual novel/bullet hell hybrid where you take the role of a sheriff with psychic abilities who is tasked with investigating a murder in a dying town that's hiding more secrets than she expected to find. My role on this project was as the lead User Experience Designer, which meant I was responsible for managing a smaller strike team within our larger team to ensure the overall experience for players, from the interface to the game feel, kept them engaged throughout the game.
For the user interface, I worked heavily with our artist in the first half of the project to design what each part of the interface looked like and ensure that they fit the vibe that we were going for with our game. Once she designed them, I would go into Figma and mockup what the screen will look like to the player and then bring it to our programmers and work with them to implement these elements.
In the second half of the project, our artist had left, and the team was a bit lost and mismanaged. Still, we gained an additional designer specializing in User Experience Design, and this, along with two other programmers and a new producer, helped out a lot with making sure our vision for the game, specifically my vision for the UX, came to fruition. I then shifted to refining the overall game feel of the project so that players come away feeling satisfied with our game, and it has resulted in something that I can feel proud of. I also took on more of a leadership role, helping to guide our UX team and make sure that things are to my standards and match the direction the game is going.
Of all of my projects, this is one that I am the most proud of, and I came away from this with a lot of valuable lessons in making sure to scope a game right and being there to make sure a team member is staying on track, and I especially came away feeling more confident in my leadership skills as well.
