Game Designer | Sound Designer

Adam Puttergill

Welcome to my portfolio! I'm a Computer Gameplay Design & Production graduate from The University of Staffordshire. I have a passion for both Games Design and Sound Design and strive to produce quality work across both disciplines. My main proficiencies are in relevant practices for both areas as well as Unreal Engine 5 Blueprinting & MetaSounds.

• About Me
• Game Design
• Sound Design

About Me

I've recently completed my B.Sc (Hons) at The University of Staffordshire where I've refined skills in Games Design, Unreal Engine Blueprinting, SFX Creation & MetaSounds Implementation.I've had a passion for Games Design for as long as I can remember - I grew up on games like Halo, Doom, Just Cause & Far Cry and have been constantly inspired by the worlds found within them.I began to take music seriously aged fourteen, playing bass guitar and drums for several different bands throughout my high school years. After graduating high school, I stayed on as a teacher assistant for the music department for 4 months.I'd always known that I wanted to create games myself, but never expected these two separate passions to come together until I started exploring Sound Design during my second year at university.I've been heavily inspired by Sound Designers/Composers Martin O' Donnell and Mick Gordon and strive to produce quality work at such a standard.

Game Design

Here you'll find a selection of my work - Explore my projects to learn more about game design methodologies.

Sound Design

Here you'll find a selection of my work - Explore my projects to learn more about approach to sound design.

The Buccaneer Brawl

As a designer for this project, I contributed to early stage conceptualisation of the project including design document work and game flow planning.After the initial planning stage, I then focused on the characters for the game, designing their backgrounds, themes, abilities and statistics. I created overviews for each character and their stats, as well as mechanic diagrams for their abilities and how each character fits into the flow of the game.After conducting player testing, I spent time refining the numbers relating to their abilities and stats, ensuring the game was balanced in such a way that it was challenging but not overwhelming for the player.

The Buccaneer Brawl

I worked as the primary sound designer & composer for this project, curating sound effects from SoundSnap, balancing and editing them with FL Studio before implementing them into the game using Sound Cues. I created two original songs for the project - a menu theme and an in-game track.Given the game's theme, I spent time researching the era, common weapons and different roles of pirates to gain an understanding of the time period before gathering appropriate sound effects for each character and their abilities.With my compositions, I researched other forms of media that were centered around pirates and drew inspiration from the music's string-centered instrumentation and decided to develop a motif that would appear in both of the songs in order to create a cohesive soundtrack.

Zen Zone

This project focused on creating a variety of systems within a new skill area. As such, I decided to try and create a 2D game in UE5 and explore the different plugins available to aid in that process.The game revolved around form-switching, be it the player character, the plants that they're growing or the breakable world objects in the game. As such, I had a heavy focus on player testing to ensure that these mechanics felt intuitive and comfortable for the player.I created many mechanic diagrams related to the player, plants and world-objects in order to highlight the differences in their functions. Different player character forms had different abilities associated with them such as watering, fertilising and destruction, and these uses had to be effectively related to the objects with which they interact.I also designed and implemented all of the UI present in the game, taking it from simple wireframes through to test widgets before finalising their appearance and functionality.

Zen Zone

As a Sound Designer, I researched different calming games (Stardew Valley, for example) studying their soundtracks and approaches to SFX.I spent time learning more about UE5's Sound Cues and how to use them to manipulate played sound effects during runtime, as well as how to sync them up directly with animations using notifies.I also composed two original songs for this project using GarageBand. I took inspiration from Chill Wave music by incorporating melodies and counter-melodies using synths, as well as including an emphasis on the bass and simple drums.

Cosmic Fonk

This was my first foray into UE5's MetaSounds system and I learned how to communicate with a MetaSounds output that tracks .wav markers using blueprints in order to spawn in different coloured notes with precise timing.For the investigation, I researched, designed and implemented a basic tutorial, video tutorial and curated tutorial for the project. I then ran several playtesting sessions with other students at the university and assigned them each a random tutorial to follow before playing through the final level.I recorded each player's accuracy on the final level and used this statistic to determine how each tutorial affected their performance. Additionally, I had them reflect on their own performance by filling out a NASA Task Load Index form which allowed me to gauge the effect that each tutorial had on their own confidence within the game.My hypothesis was that a curated tutorial would serve players the best, especially in the case of this game, and the results from playtesting supported this hypothesis. For a more detailed overview of this project and my findings, check out my Slide Deck here

Those Things From Below

In the first few weeks of development, I worked as a lead designer on the team, ideating the game and its core mechanics/loop and concepting the visual style of the world.I led a small team of junior designers to conceptualise the weapons in the game, and then further developed their mechanics, stats and other related behaviours such as spawning through various diagrams and documentation.

Those Things From Below

I primarily worked on sound effects & sound systems, curating sound effects from SoundSnap, merging and mixing them in FL Studio before implementing them into Unreal Engine. I used a combination of Unreal's Sound Cue & MetaSounds systems in order to foster a dynamic soundscape that reflected the eerie tone of the gameplay and brought the factory to 'unlife'.Being the only person in the project working on sound effects, I was constantly communicating with different departments (design, art, tech etc) to ensure that everything I was working on aligned with the vision of the game.I also had the opportunity to lead and direct a junior technical designer who wanted to create their own music for the game. It was a great pleasure to work with them - I helped them iterate on their demos for both a menu theme and in-game track by providing feedback and sharing examples of other games that had soundtracks to take inspiration from.