Vittorio Corbo

Engine: Roblox Studio || Timeline:  May 2022 - August 2022 || Team Size: 15 || Other Tools: Excel, Git, Jira

Overview

At Roblox I worked as a Game Designer. Making new Levels and accompanying Mechanics for Game Based Assessments. These are taken to by all applicants for entry-level and intern Software Engineering roles at Roblox.

Game Design

• Designed 2 New Levels & Mechanics for Game Based Assessments, improving the robustness and diversity of the hiring testing suite, to measure creativity and problem solving of 5000 yearly applicants.
• Reduced production time and resources, by reusing existing mechanics in new ways.
• Worked alongside Psychologists and People Scientists, from ideation to approval phase, to create levels that met strict testability requirements.
• Iterated quickly within an in-house tool, building functional prototypes Iterated quickly, building prototypes and using proprietary tools, from testing to a polished product.
• Collaborated alongside Psychologists, Artists, Software Engineers, Producers, and Game Designers.

More info about Game Based Assessments

To learn more about what Assessment games entail, feel free to checkout this GDC talk from my former boss at Roblox.

Engine: Unity || Timeline:  May 2023 - August 2023 || Team Size: 30 || Other Tools: Git, Trello, Propetiary C engine

Overview

Medieval Lands is an old-school remake of Eternal Lands. As a Programmer I had to help this porting process and bring this remake into Unity.

Code

Engine: C/C++, KallistiOS, OpenGL, DreamSDK || Timeline:  Jan 2022 - May 2023 || Team Size:  5 || Other Tools:  Bootcamp, Git

Overview

At Georgia Tech I worked as an Undergraduate Researcher, working on Homebrew games for the SEGA Dreamcast. In this Vertically Integrated Project (VIP), I worked alongside other students and under professor: Aaron Lanterman.

What I did

• Developed 2D & 3D homebrew games, alongside 5 students, in OpenGL under professor Aaron Lanterman
• Researched a diverse array of other engines and workflows due to poor online resources
• Created textures using proprietary format
• Documented work and created technical guides
• Burned and ran games on original hardware

Engine: GameMaker Studio 2 || Timeline:  Apr 2018 - Present. (TBD on Steam) || Team Size: Solo || Other Tools: FL Studio, Musescore, Git

Overview

Vittorio Corbo's Un-BEATable Game is a musical bullethell where you want to get shot. Where instead of bullets, you are shot by the musical notes of the music that's playing. All in a dance between the author (myself) and the player (hopefully you) in a game that demolishes the 4th wall (if you could not tell by now).

Design

Code

For this project I've had to create a system to know which musical note is being played at any given time. Hence, I encoded songs as a .txt file which allows the player to be shot with music. Additionally, I connect to the Steam APIto give the players in-depth stats and a personalized experience to enhance the games themes.

Art

While simple, the game draws artistic inspiration form old-school Atari games, and Pacman. The game has a minimalist artstyle, that allows the player to focus more closely to the action and narrative.

Music

In the game, the music is used as the bullets the hit the player. Thus musical complexity directly correlates to the in-game difficulty. Songs are originally composed in Musescore, then FL Studio is used to remaster the track. Only 3 voices are played at a time to cap out difficulty and emulate the NES musical limitations.

Playtesting

The has been shown off at two Steam Next Fests, the Steam Bullet Heaven Fest, and at Dreamhack Atlanta. Received live testing and feedback, and validated the gameplay formula. Ran the game in multiple setups and configurations, ensuring proper performance. Moreover, verified full controller and keyboard support. Found bugs and identified places for polish.

Engine: Unity/C# || Timeline:  Aug 2023 - Jan 2024 || Team Size: 15 (Team Lead) || Other Tools: Trello, Git, Blender

Overview

Equinox is a Open World First Person Puzzler set in Space! Where your ONLY mode of movement is a Grapple hook, with which you will have to fix the ship!

Project Lead

As the Project Lead I worked with all areas of production to get the game done in a span of a 4 months. I had to create Trello tasks, and manage weekly meetings with every sub-team. We worked with an AGILE framework, working in sprints that lasted 3 weeks. As the Project Manager, I not only managed every part of development, but I also worked alongside members, flexing my abilities, to truly understand and work as a team-member in every stage of the process.

Game Design

Grappling as a mechanic already gives players immense freedom for traversal. Removing gravity on top of that provides almost even more freedom. However, as the game is a puzzler this limitless traversal posed problems, as the player could escape any linear puzzle segments. Thus we decided to make the game open world, with a strong emphasis in level design to try to recomend a natural progression along the ship, while still keeping an open MetroidVania nature to the game.

Code

• Used a Composite coding pattern to manage and keep track of the items fixed in the ship.
• Built initial architecture for which game was built upon.
• Scripted all events and interactions of the game scene.
• Bug fixed and polished

Playtesting

Ran open playtesting sessions during 4 separate events during production. Gathered feedback that help determine the future evolution of the game concept, and then run bug testing to polish the game. Shown at Wreckcon.

Engine: GameMaker Studio 2 || Timeline:  Feb 2023 - Apr 2024 || Team Size:  Solo Project || Other Tools:  None

Overview

If the World were to End Blossom Tomorrow is a plant planting puzzler, where you try to make your little plants survive in a world ravaged by war.

Design

This game was experiment in the area of Systems Design in the aspect of Resource Management, as the player has a limited amount of water that they must learn to manage properly. Moreover, this game was meant to be less mechanical and tell a deeper story. It exploits the dichotomy of plants which represent life and the war and death that is happening outside the window. Which shows a very grim take of war.

Code

As a systems game this really pushed my boundaries and skills as a developer. As I had to implement proper coding patterns to build a systems heavy game.

Art

All art here is custom-made by me, changing every day to reflect the crumbling world outside the window.

Engine:  Unreal Engine 5/C++ || Timeline:  Aug - Dec 2022 || Team Size: 13 || Other Tools:  Trello, Git

Overview

Dry is a survival horror game where you are stranded in an abandoned oil rig looking for gasoline to refill your car and escape. However, you might not be alone in this place.

Design

For this game I worked as one of the game designers. For example helping flesh out the two hand mechanic. In which the player can only grab two items at once (one per hand) and nothing more. And how items and collectibles would work as the player tries to escape the area.

Engine: GameMaker Studio 2 || Timeline:  July 2020 || Team Size: Solo Project || Other Tools:  None

Overview

ALPHABET is a fusion between Snake and Twister, where each letter grabbed changes your keybinds as you collect all the letters of the alphabet!

Game Jam

Competed in the GMTK 2020 Game Jam, whose theme was: Out of Control. Ranked #434 out of 5477.

Design

The game fits the chaotic nature, as it fights the players inate muscle memory as keybinds are completely changed and morrover, the contortion on they keyboard itself. Moreover to the games arcady nature. The player is incited to replay and fight these reflexes.

Code

Create an input system that can dynamically change keybinds.

Cool Fact

As the player obtains letters, musical notes begin to play. Most players do not understand the nature of this, due to their lack of speed and thus the understanding of the music. However, the song that is playing is twinkle twinkle little star, which most people don't know is the same song as the alphabet, hence the games name.

Engine: Unity/C# Timeline: January 2024 (48 hours) Team Size: 5 (Team Lead) Other Tools: FL Studio, Trello, Aseprite, Git

Overview

In Grin And Gas you escape an insane asylum armed with the power of laughing gas.

Game Jam

Competed in the Global Game Jam at Georgia State University and won Best Use of Theme, in a competition against 24 other games.

Team Lead

Due to the nature of the gamejam, I had to work especially hard getting everybody aligned with the projects vision, and making tough decisions, cutting features, and working on polish to get the game finished in time. Managed, organized, and sub-divided tasks.

Design

Laughing gas to the shape of an offensive weapon, but to keep the gameplay unique, we made it so you would have to melee enemies to drain their laughter and obtain more laughing gas. Thus, creating a give and take between melee and ranged options.

Code

Made the enemies have different alternating attack patterns by using coroutines.

Music

Remixed Entry of the Gladiators in two different styles to switch between the sane and insane modes in the game.

Engine: GameMaker Studio 2 || Timeline:  July 2022 || Team Size: Solo Project || Other Tools: None

Overview

EVERY (few) WORDS ARE RANDOM was made for GMTK's 2022 game jam, whose theme was: Roll of the Dice. The game is Madlibs if words were 100% randomly assigned.

Game Jam

Competed in the GMTK 2022 Game Jam, whose theme was: Ramdom. Ranked #5038 out of 6,067.

Design

This game shows that randomness is not always ideal. The game is a huge mess, but through that you can see the problem with true randomness as it does not allow any authorial control.

Code

I generated random words from a pool of 200000 words, by using the dictionary wordlist from: F*ck Every Word 2.0 on X.com

Engine: Unity/C# || Timeline: Oct - Dec 2023 || Team Size: Solo Project || Other Tools: Blender, Git

Overview

Childlike Mischief is a game in a typical never-ending summer, where you have to find a way to see the sunset, as the mother stops you at the end of every day. All in a way a kid would: by being a little rascal!.

Design

Created a game that merges Untitled Goose Game with Outer Wilds, to create a game with a repeating loop that makes players try to watch the sunset in a typical summer. Created a complete quest chain to complete the time-loop.

Note

Game is unfinished.

Engine:  GameMaker Studio 2 || Timeline: Sep 2020- Jan 2021 || Team Size: Solo Project || Other Tools: None

Overview

Typing is Hard is a typing game (duh) where what you type is at the mercy of the games questionable creator.

Design

This game tries to degamify the act of typing. The problem with most typing games is that they players type faster and faster until they fail. And while this is a fun way to measure typing speed, this is a terrible way to teach typing. As a kid you learn how to read not by being forced to read faster and faster, but rather by sheer time and practice. This is what this game does.

Code

Introduced stats like: wpm, error detection, and consistency to allow people to practice thier typing. Moreover, players can input their own custom .txt files to type out anything they desire.

Engine:  Unity/C# || Timeline:  Sep 2022 - Jan 2023 || Team Size: Solo Project || Other Tools: Git

Overview

Grapple Man is First Person Puzzler where you cannot move. Rather you can teleport to wherever you look to reach the end.

Design

This game was an experiment on 3D level design. The ability to teleport anywhere gives many limitations to level design which makes creating puzzles even harder. Hence adding see throgh walls and ungrappable walls was crucial. Nonetheless, the abilty to just point and click simplifies the experience, hence players do not need to worry about systems such as movmeent (WASD) or gravity when playing.

Code

While very simplistic, the lack of code shows how a fun game can be created by removing elements in a game gerne, as camera movement is the only input.

Cool Fact

This game is the one that was the inspiration and built the groundwork for: Equinox (shown above).

Platforming is a small twine game I made with some classmates, which is a response to the sometimes monotonous game design of games like Mario. (Team Project)

The Average Gamer shows you how the conception of an average gamer is completely made up, and there are no true average gamers. (Solo Project).

Alien equals Unknown shows how the words we give things give them meaning and thus change our perception. (Team Project)