JAKE OGDEN
GAMES DESIGN
ABOUT ME
My name is Jake, I'm a games designer from Bradford, UK. I have always been a gamer, and knew from an early age that this is something I wanted to do as a career. I studied Creative Media Production in Games at Bradford College, which really taught me what skills I had within the games industry, which was the technical side of design.
At the University of Huddersfield, I excelled at the design and leadership sides of projects, which lead to a very successful game being made within the team project module for final year. With this and my other skills I achieved a First class degree in Computer Games Design BA(Hons).
Within the space of 3 months working at Ocean Spark Studios, I have published 2 games onto the iOS App Store and Android Google Play Store to a released state. As well as working on the successor to the team project game that I led.
KEY SKILLS
Published Games
Currently have 2 games published on both the Android Google Play Store and iOS App Store.
These were both made within the space of 3 months as myself being the sole programmer and designer. One has localisation in 13 languages.
GAME ENGINES
Strong skills in game engines (UE4 and Unity), ability to quickly learn new engines.
Knowledge in most aspects within the engine infrastructures (scripting, lighting, animation, etc.)
GAME DESIGN
4+ years experience in games design, with a first class degree specifically in games design.
Strong ability to script in both Blueprint (UE4) and C# (Unity)
COMMUNICATION
Strong team-work, leadership, and communication skills.
Led the team project module in my final year of university, which achieved a 87% grade and was shown at the Bradford Science and Media Museum.
ROLLING SEASONS
TEABAG IN A CUP
This project was a big project which involved just myself as the programmer (using Blueprint) and designer (creating the game-play, level and menu-navigation systems). It required me to optimise the engine to run a heavily intensive mobile game, and learn a lot about level streaming optimisations and working with multiple levels streaming at once.
This project also has a wide language selection menu where players can select different languages if desired. Although Korean is in the screenshots, it has recently been removed from Google Play as a supported language.
FLEABAGS
This project was a small project which started as a test to see how quickly and effectively I could make a mobile ready game, which was largely completed within 2 weeks. Further development was done to optimise for mobile, as well as implementing ad systems and leader-boards.
A vertical slice of the successor to Rabid Rumble. Created within 10 weeks.
Rabid Rumble
This project is an Unreal Engine 4 overhaul of the University team project "Rabid Rumble" made in Unity (project below).
My responsibilities for this game was largely co-creating the core systems within the prototype phase of the game, as well as unique level mechanics that act as traps for the players. The menu navigation controls were done by myself as well, allowing for both keyboard & mouse and controller support for the navigation, since UE4 doesn't controller navigation support for menu systems.
The final video trailer for the university team project game that I was the team lead for.
CONTACT ME
Rabid Rumble is the final year Team Project game for University. I was the team lead for this project, and was responsible for delegating work, changing workloads to better fit the team dynamic, and knowing where slack needed to be picked up from.
I was also a major part in the technical development side of this project, creating a large portion of the level mechanics through C# scripting, assisting with the core mechanics such as rag-doll interaction, combat systems, etc. As well as creating the entire animation systems, lighting systems and optimisations.
This was taken to Yorkshire Games Festival at the Science and Media Museum, Bradford where it received a very positive reception and gave very valuable feedback for the final phase of development.