Tom Woodbridge
Game Design
Hello!
I've been working as a designer in the games industry for the last 12 years. I've worked on games such as Somerville, the LittleBigPlanet franchise, and The Room series.
I love finding opportunities to add joyful moments to games, via gameplay mechanics, puzzles, and level design. I also enjoy speeding up the design process by using my skills in programming, animation and modeling.
My favourite aspect of working in this industry is spending time with interesting people. I've been lucky enough to meet some wonderful people over the last decade, and I hope I'll have many more opportunities to do so.
Design Showreel
Here's a more detailed look at some of my design work:
Experience
Somerville
I joined Jumpship to learn more about developing third-person action adventures – a genre I love. My work on Somerville included prototyping gameplay mechanics, scripting in C#, and designing levels.
This project had a strong focus on cinematography. Our levels needed to serve the game's filmic pacing, and the puzzles needed to sit naturally in the environment to facilitate the game's atmosphere. This was a different philosophy to past projects, making it an interesting challenge.
The Room VR
I designed puzzles and levels for The Room VR at Fireproof Games.
It was my first experience of designing for a VR game, and it was fascinating to see how VR presents a very different set of challenges and opportunities.
I aimed to design interactions and puzzles which would tease out the core strengths of VR as a medium.
The Room 4
For this entry in The Room series, I designed around half of the levels and puzzles in the game.
I wanted to deliver the high-quality design which fans of this series expect, while delighting them with surprises they haven't seen before. So I challenged myself to design tactile interactions which feel fundamentally different to those seen in previous games.
The game was nominated for two BAFTAs, to our delight!
The Room Three
I joined the brilliant team at Fireproof to do implementation work on The Room Three. This two-year project gave me an opportunity to learn about Unity, C#, and puzzle design.
The quality bar for this series is very high, so I worked hard to maintain or exceed those standards where possible.
The Ice Skater
This was a personal project, focussed on game feel. I challenged myself to give players a sensation of graceful and elegant movement.
To do this, I wrote a custom character controller in C#, with unique physics designed to reward players who seek momentum. I also modeled, rigged and animated the character; I found that animation was key to creating the sensation of speed and elegance.
Here's a quick video of this in motion.
LittleBigPlanet Vita: Marvel Arcade
I worked on this fast-paced Marvel-themed expansion for LittleBigPlanet Vita at Supermassive Games.
We wanted to surprise LBP fans with unexpected gameplay mechanics; so we built several smaller games in different genres. (I worked on one inspired by the classic Luftrausers.)
It was great fun to push LBP's creative tools beyond their usual remit.
LittleBigPlanet Vita: DC Comics DLC
My fascination for design led me into Supermassive Games' design team, where I created levels for this LittleBigPlanet Vita add-on.
I'm a big LBP fan, and I had already spent untold hours in 'Create Mode' – so this project was delightful. It was my first professional design role, and I couldn't have asked for a friendlier introduction.
Wonderbook: Walking with Dinosaurs
I worked as an animator on this project at Supermassive Games; it was my last animation project before I jumped into design work.
It goes without saying that animating a menagerie of BBC-approved dinosaurs was a privilege.
Start the Party 1 & 2
Supermassive Games gave me my introduction to the industry. My first role was as an animator; I was tasked with bringing a cast of oddballs to life for the Start the Party games. These titles were designed to showcase the PlayStation Move.
Arriving from the animation industry, I was keen to learn about the process of game development from the experienced team at Supermassive.
Contact 👋
E-mail: twoodbridge@gmail.com
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/twoodbridge/
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