The Grazing Night
Lead Designer, Player System Designer
Team: 80 people
Duration: 16 weeks
Overview
The Grazing Night is a top-down adventure game built around companion-based interaction and herd control systems.
The game focuses on managing a herd under pressure, where player control, positioning, and decision-making directly affect survival.
I started as a gameplay designer, working on the player character and companion mechanics, focusing on interaction and control design.
Later, I took over as design lead, organizing team workflows, establishing pipelines, and ensuring consistency of the project’s vision across a large team.
Contributions
Core Systems
Designed core gameplay systems built around the relationship between player, companion, and herd, where sheep function as a living sanity resource and central gameplay driver.
Camera and Vision System
Designed camera and vision systems that limit player perception, using vision cones and environmental lighting to reinforce tension and uncertainty.
Input Mode / Combat Trade-offs
Designed input-based gameplay trade-offs, where switching to combat disables herd control, forcing players to balance survival and resource management.
Pipeline / leadership
As Design Lead, I introduced a structured workflow and team hierarchy to organize how gameplay mechanics were designed and iterated within sprint cycles.
This improved communication, clarified responsibilities, and made the development process more predictable for the design team.