The Game
Your Average Bear is a stealth comedy about a black bear stealthily sneaking their way through a campsite to steal food for their animal pals. This game was developed as part of the University of Utah's EAE Program 2022-2023 Capstone Course, in which students form small studios and develop a game from start to finish, ideation phase to full release, in only two semesters. The game was released on Steam to positive reviews and is currently at over 40,000 downloads.
My Responsibilities
Narrative Design
Narrative Design was my primary role working on this title. That included helping to develop the game's story and its characters, writing dialogue for NPCs and in-game implementations such as costume ideas and mechanics, and working with our game's voice actor/one of its producers to develop lines for his narrator character.
Social Media
Social media is ultimately about engagement and that was a big portion of my contribution to this game. I utilized all platforms to draft and develop posts, replied to comments and feedback, and even screenwrote and edited promotional trailers for events. These events spanned from the 2023 Game Developer's Conference to the University of Utah's annual launch event, whose trailer reached 2,000+ views in the span of a couple weeks.
User Interface
One part I was proud to play a hand in was in the UI team, drafting the original concept for the UBearEats app and creating several icons for Steam achievements. From the idea of implementing a quest tracker based on food delivery apps, I was involved in concepting a basic design in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, before helping to implement the final design into Unreal Engine 5.
Level Design
Utilizing the power of Unreal Engine 5, I worked in the layouts of the game's tutorial and overall main level. This included but is not limited to developing a basic design for how it could look, playtesting different options, and finding and developing a path for the tutorial world and portions of the campsite.
Our Game's Success and Articles
One of the biggest reasons for this game's success came from the team's ability to collaborate. We were a team of 27 that met multiple times a week, talked daily via Discord, and showed true care for one another. There were challenges due to making a game of this size as students with many other things going on in our lives, but through it all, we managed to make the game. In addition, we also had initial issues regarding how we send out quests. However, through the idea of implementing a food delivery service and a huge amount of teamwork, we developed the idea of having the bear character use the phone UI to track each order. Throughout the entire process, we always worked together and communicated well and that's how we succeeded.
After our release, the team of Your Average Studio are proud to say that we have had several articles written about the game. Please feel free to read through some of them using the clickable links below.
Writing Samples
Below you will find samples of some of the game's writing progress. This includes my work in dialogue as well as screenwriting for a promotional trailer. Please click below to look over them using the clickable links below.
These are lines of dialogue written to play throughout as camp announcements from a crazed ranger constantly warning campers about the bear (the player) and the animals that gave the bear their orders.
This is a script written for a trailer being made to promote the game's presentation at an event called EAE Launch.