Smoke Break!
Creative Director, May 2024 - May 2025
Collegiate Games Challenge: 1st place in Interactive + 2nd place in Cinematic
SAGE awards: Student Game of the Year + Best Design Award
Smoke Break! is a lighthearted 3D stealth puzzle game where you play as Applewood — a living puff of smoke. By breaking machinery, dashing past bakers, and using smoke to grow, you can hunt down the ultimate, yet elusive, burnt pie!
Available for free on steam!: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3564090/Smoke_Break/
3,200+
Downloads
99
Positive Reviews / 100
52
Team members
6
Awards won
Smoke Break! was more than just a year-long project in developing a game, it was the catalyst that forced me to learn what responsibility meant on a grander scale.
Being in charge of 51 different people while under the scrutiny of our professors was a massive challenge in many fields:
(Pictures are of Smoke Break's debut at USC's Game Expo!)
Communication: All 51 members with various levels of commitment were checked in with each week during our biweekly labs to ensure that everyone's being heard and has their status known.
Creative Unity: Regular team lead meetings let us keep a holistic view on the game with each discipline ensuring that the overall project stayed creatively cohesive with one another.
Scope Management: With a hard deadline, each week had to count. My Lead Producer (Rachel Brockman) and I would go through the task sheet in order to see how long tasks are taking to re-scope the project in turn.
Facilitating Feedback: Taking feedback every other week from professors through presentations, questioning and turning it into actionables became the norm. It was both a lesson in how to act as well as figuring out what feedback to focus on and what to discard.
And though things were rocky at the start of the year, we learnt quick-- which didn't mean we were immune to problems, just that we could adapt fast enough to get this game finished and to a state we were happy with on time!
The Pitch
Starting the process of becoming a Creative Director
In the Spring of 2024, USC held 2 pitch gates for AGP, the first being a pdf submission and the second being a presentation held in front of faculty.
In this stage, Smoke Break! was known as CO2NFISCATED and focused on a smoke elemental trying to avoid airport security to get back to their owner!
Included are the presentations and documents from my pitching stage:
Gate 1: Concept Submission
Gate 2: Presentation to Faculty