Brendan McLeod

I'm a game designer from Key West, Florida. I love telling stories, meeting animals, and the sea.I'm a narrative designer and a level designer. No matter the project I'm on or the position I hold, I make it my job to help the player tell great stories, and build spaces for stories to take place.

Click here for my resume ►Click here for examples of my work ►

What I love doing:I love building games that allow players to express themselves, and I want to build games that acknowledge that expressivity.I live for building responsive games: an NPC who remembers your deeds, a conversation option to respond to a silly hat, a funny quip from a companion when something happens for the 3rd time in a row. I love writing reactive dialogue and using it to give the world a sense of authentic character.I'm good at building worlds. I love the exercise of imagining how a thing exists in space in time: what forces it acts on, and how it acts on other things. I like filling the world with places, people, and conversations.I like getting my hands dirty. I'm comfortable managing big sets of data, implementing it in-engine, and keeping everything organized so other people can interpret it.

My software skills:I'm very familiar with Unity and C#, and with Unreal Engine 4/5 and Blueprints. I'm familar with the Ink narrative scripting language, and have used proprietary language tools at places like BioWare and Aspyr.

Map of Tzel Sh'el from OATHSWORN.
Producing this weekly podcast combines my experience with managing data with my talent for expression and storytelling.http://oathswornpodcast.com

Resume / CV

For my complete employment history, you can download my resume here:Resume - Download Link

 

Selected Personal Projects

If you want a playable example of my video game work as a narrative designer, try this game I made!http://sulcata.itch.io/12-labors

Examples of my work as a tabletop narrative designer

My actual-play podcast, which I design and write content for on a weekly cadence

Selected Professional Works

Breach

Created for PC at QC Games from 2017-2019
Senior Gameplay Designer

A 4v1 live-service action-brawler set in the near-future where stylish mages do battle with mythological monsters and secret societies.I was responsible for building missions from prototype to completion. I wrote adventures for players to go on, invented enemies for them to tackle, and designed the level layout where it would all take place.The biggest challenge on Breach was one of scope. The game's staff was relatively small, and that meant that I needed to keep my ambitions relatively humble when it came to generating new work, whether that was enemies, rooms, or set pieces.I addressed this challenge by adopting a zero-waste mentality. I was going to use every piece of the animal, so to speak: everything that I built would be modular, efficient, and multipurpose. Rooms would be visited and revisited. New enemies would have future use-cases plotted out for them. Set pieces would be built from piecemeal components that looked good but could be easily repurposed later.By doing a lot of planning up front, and coordinating with production how and where I would use new work, I was able to efficiently build new art, freeing us up to polish what we had to look as good as possible!

Materials:
Announcement TrailerSamples:
Level Walkthrough - "HIGHRISE"
Level Walkthrough - "VALLEY"

Star Wars The Old Republic:
Knights of the Eternal Throne

Created for PC at BioWare from 2016-2017
World Designer

I spent a year as a project hire at BioWare for the Eternal Throne expansion for the Star Wars MMO, the Old Republic. I created repeatable missions for players who'd already completed the main campaign of the expansion and were looking for new challenges.In both missions, I strove to unite familiar Star Wars tropes and unexpected, unfamiliar gameplay elements that would make the experiences feel fresh and interesting, even on repeated attempts.For the first, on Tatooine, I focused on a Star Wars classic: bandits on Tatooine! But to liven things up, I gave both the bandits AND the player access to the incredible alien wildlife of the desert planet, giving the player the chance to summon monsters to fight alongside them as they raided the bandit camp.For the second, on the mining world of Makeb, I took the idea of corrupting a Jedi to the nth degree: what if they dug too deep and found an eldritch creature? The player has to escort an explosive payload through the mine, confronting monsters and machines until they find the deranged Jedi - and its many-tentacled master.In both scenarios, I strove to keep a careful balance of fun, engaging gameplay, while still staying true to the tone of the Star Wars world. It was a lot of fun to bring the two together!

Materials:
Cinematic Trailer
Game Homepage - https://www.swtor.comSamples:
Playthrough - Tatooine: Done and Dusted
Playthrough - Makeb: Destroyer of Worlds

Heroes of Ruin

Created for Nintendo 3DS at n-Space from 2010-2012
Lead Designer

A co-op action-RPG for the Nintendo 3DS. I was primary designer, and created the narrative for the game, creating the world, its characters, and the events of the story.Heroes of Ruin arrived at a time when we'd just gotten our hands on 3DS hardware, and were still discovering what it could do. We knew we wanted to play in the action-RPG space, and take advantage of its online gaming potential - eventually launching a game with worldwide matchmaking and on-board player VOIP using the 3DS's microphone!I drew on my experience running tabletop games to create Heroes's world - most particularly, using classic fantasy monsters in new and interesting ways. I tried to make sure that everything - cultures, peoples, and sources of power - was neither so vaguely sketched that it didn't leave an impression, but likewise wasn't so comprehensively explained that it became banal. I was fortunate to have a fantastic team of designers and artists to work with to riff with.As much fun as writing the main story was, I had a lot of fun writing the incidental stuff as well: barks, character names, and NPC dialogue reacting to the players' deeds and the state of the world.

Materials:
Gameplay Trailer

GoldenEye 007

Created for Nintendo DS at n-Space from 2009-2010
Lead Designer

The second of two James Bond DS games that I was primary designer for, on the heels of James Bond 007: Blood Stone. "Modern day GoldenEye starring Daniel Craig" was a tall order. The story's cinematic moments and a serious-but-wry Bond would be hard enough to capture, but we also had the classic N64 title to consider.This was especially challenging for me because I didn't like the N64 game very much at the time of its release! I had to draw on what other people most liked about it and my own tastes and preferences, colored by my appreciation of stealth-action games like Metal Gear Solid, Hitman, and the lesser-known but just as remarkable Riddick games.I took the approach of constructing GoldenEye as if it was an original story, rather than something I needed to pay homage to. Working from the parent title's script, I built objectives, story beats, and set pieces as if I was plotting out an original Daniel Craig film. This let me evaluate the work on its own merit rather than constantly trying to live up to a perceived legend.

Materials:
Announcement Trailer

Star Wars Battlefront: Elite Squadron

Created for Nintendo DS at n-Space from 2008-2009
Lead Designer

Made for the Nintendo DS, Battlefront Elite Squadron was the first professional game that I was the primary designer for. Originally planned on being a handheld supplement to Star Wars Battlefront III, the game became a standalone title when development of its next-gen version was cancelled.This meant that I was faced not only with adapting a script that'd been written for a much larger product, but also a script that no longer has the core pillars of the "base" product to lean on any longer. (While a version was developed in parallel for the PSP, their work and ours happened completely independently, and the two games are entirely different.)To compensate for the loss of the "big brother" product, I chosen to lean as much as I could on the core Star Wars lore, pulling in great moments from the games, the recently-released Force Unleashed (which I'd also worked on), and the Extended Universe.The result was a "greatest hits" of what Star Wars had to offer at the time, putting the player in the middle of classic moments like the Death Star trench run, the siege of Coruscant, and the forest moon of Endor. By keeping our mechanics simple and our levels light and compact, we were able to deliver a cinematic experience far in excess of what was usually found on the Nintendo DS.

Materials:
Announcement Trailer

Selected Personal Works

12 Labors

Created with Garrett SteeleA short narrative video game about recovering from trauma, dealing with your family, and doing yardwork.Colored by personal experiences, I wanted to create a game that expressed how rigorous, repetitive physical tasks can unlock understanding and empathy.I worked together with Garrett to build out a story in which the pace and tone felt true to the experience of making a mistake and seeking forgiveness for it, both from yourself and from others. I'm proud of the work that we did to tell a story about feeling sorry for yourself and saying you're sorry without being saccharine.One big challenge with this game was making sure that the story's conclusion didn't feel like a foregone conclusion. I wanted the apology at the end of the game to feel earned: like something the player character had had to work their way up to. At the same time, I didn't want the process to feel onerous or put-upon. Garrett and I worked hard to keep the rhythm of the game steady throughout.Samples:
You can play the entire game for free by downloading it at its itch page! It takes about 20-40 minutes.
https://sulcata.itch.io/12-labors

ichor-drowned

Created with Sillion LA tabletop game supplement for Heart: the City Beneath, the award-winning RPG from Rowan, Rook and Decard that introduces a ton of new character options, monsters, and tools, and well as ways for games-masters to generate dungeons on the fly using a deck of cards.I co-wrote much of the main content of the book, and wrote the included adventure, Testament: a quest that sends the players sneaking into the gold-paved streets of heaven to kidnap someone who's not supposed to be there.ichor-drowned was an amazing challenge both because of its scope (140 pages!) and because I'm such a big fan of the macabre absurdity of Heart. The writing in Rowan Rook and Decard's work is a huge influence on my own voice as a writer. Their macabre, mischievous tone matches well with my dry sense of humor. Writing material that felt appropriate to the work without simply parroting their own work took a lot of thought and effort.

Materials
Game Homepage - https://sillionl.itch.io/ichor-drownedSamples:
An excerpt from my adventure, Testament:
Download Link

FATHOM

Created with Matthew GuzdialSometimes you need a tabletop game to exist so badly that you wind up creating it yourself. Thus was the case with FATHOM, a game about surreal adventure in the urban world. In FATHOM, you play as a drifter: someone in touch with the UnReal, the secret, multifaceted otherworld that lies just beyond the perception of normal people. You can dive into the UnReal, confront monsters, untangle curses, and confront ideas themselves - but you still have to scrounge up enough money to pay your rent when the day is done.Creating a whole tabletop game is challenging enough, even when you're building it on top of a pre-existing system. For FATHOM, we wanted different perspectives to be an essential part of the gameplay experience, so much so that nearly every player character class plays differently from one another.The biggest challenge in FATHOM was - and continues to be (the game is still development) - making the rules reflect the weird and the surreal in a satisfying way. At the end of the day, we still want people to be able to pick up the book and use it to play the game. As easy as it would be to simply say "make something up! use your imagination!", both Matthew and I know the value of practical guidance, and have tried hard to make sure we give tips, advice, and examples when telling people how to run the game.

Materials
FATHOM can be downloaded for free at its home page!
https://sulcata.itch.io/fathomSamples
Excerpt - Character Class - The Returned
Download Link

Voyage

Voyage is a map-making game for any number of players based on the Alone on a Journey framework created by Takuma Okada. Using a deck of cards, dice, prompt tables, and their imaginations, players describe a journey across the sea by recording their observations, discoveries, and struggles.I love the sea. I grew up on an island and I loved the distant horizon and the thought of venturing out to explore the distant reaches of the world. In Voyage, I wanted to give voice to that sense of boundless optimism and adventure: that feeling like anything is possible, even if the journey may be perilous.It's been a joy to see what fun people have making messy (and sometimes beautiful) maps when playing the game. One thing I've really enjoyed doing when playing the game in-person is to have people write on the playing cards that they draw - names, events, memories that the cards represent.Voyage is the first of a planned trilogy of games around ships at sea; the next is under development!

Materials
Game Homepage - https://sulcata.itch.io/voyageSamples
Excerpt - How to Play
Download Link

OATHSWORN

Created with Kris Allison, Gavin Fregeau, Matthew Guzdial, and Devin Nelson.An actual-play podcast using Band of Blades and other tabletop games to tell the story of a shattered army in a low-fantasy world as they escape from an ever-advance horde of darkness.Updated (almost) every week with an hour-ish episode for over a year. I serve as gamesmaster, director, producer, and editor of the show. It was not only my job to create interesting scenarios for the players to engage with, but to portray the world honestly, keep track of the state of the campaign at-large, and call on my players to help build on the story.Worldbuilding for Oathsworn has been a joy. I knew I didn't want a classic, Tolkeinian high fantasy world. Neither did I want everything to be the mud and muck of low-fantasy grimdark. Rather, I wanted a vibrant world, filled with diverse peoples and cultures, who have been visited with sudden horrible circumstances. Whenever the players asked about a place, I wanted to consider not merely: what is it now, but what had it been 5 years ago? 100 years ago?As producer and editor, I'm responsible for making the cast sound its best, make sure the audience takes note of important details, and embellish the story with monologues (written and usually read by me in-character) at the front of an episode.Perhaps the biggest challenge as one of the show's creators is to figure out what to keep and what to exclude for the sake of good listening. We don't want Oathsworn to be entirely narrative but we don't want to get mired in mechanics or table talk, either. Striking a balance between what makes us sound approachable and what is most listenable requires a lot of careful review.

Materials:
Podcast HomepageSamples:
Monologues from the show:
Download Link