Austen van der Byl | Game Design Portfolio
Game Designer | BA from USC in Interactive Media and Game Design
This page features trailers, major links, and short descriptions of all the projects I've worked on and roles I've had. For more information on a project, please navigate using the "All Projects - More Info" header, or click a project's title. Website layout is design for desktop.
Featured Projects
terminal connection is an experimental art game, in which you fly a plane. It is a metaphor for doomscrolling.
This game was the final product of my undergraduate thesis, for which I co-made one full game, nine game prototypes answering various questions pertaining to artmaking in games, and wrote over 40,000 words dev-logging our process and findings.
Everything for this project was co-authored.
An FPS resource management roguelike set in a world of plants and steampunk. I started working on this game concept with one of my best friends in freshman year of college. We pitched it in our sophomore year, and made it during our junior year through USC Game's AGP program where I worked as the Design Lead for the lifetime of the game.
Top-down action adventure game - play as Postman Mouse, friend of Eldritch and Ordinary alike. I co-founded Blue Monarch Games and worked as Design Lead for this project. As a team of six, we worked full time for eight weeks to go from a paper prototype to finished game.
House Of Shadows Trailer - 30 Sec - Final.movHouse of Shadows is a multi-player, third-person, zombie wave defense game. Developed in UEFN for Fortnitemares 2024. I worked as an Assistant Director, Producer, and created all custom Sound Effects.
Island code: 0369-8277-4377 | https://www.fortnite.com/@playkigai/0369-8277-4377?lang=en-US
This trailer features the gameplay prototype I produced for my internship at Millennium-LA. I designed a 3D mobile, exploration, puzzle game where you explore and learn about Jianou city. (Please note the art team used generative AI for some of the assets which feature in this demo-video.)
Other projects I've worked on
Gather ingredients to bake magical desserts to explore the world with magical abilities! Third person exploration/cozy game.
I worked in Usability and QA for the final stretch of this project.
A 2D PC base-building game where players construct and defend a town on the back of a moving turtle.
I was responsible for the Usability testing for this project during prototyping and pre-production.
Omi has something to tell you... Will you listen?
This is an experimental narrative game with contextual storytelling for Intermediate Game Design class at USC. I worked as a director, designer, and programmer primarily.
Uses Spotify's recommendation features to generate a musical labyrinth.
This was a six week project for an Intro to Unity class at USC. All features were co-developed with my project partner.
Hi! I'm Austen :>
I grew up in South Africa and attended an international boarding school in Downtown Los Angeles [3 years], attended another international boarding school in Hong Kong [2 years], spent four years in LA as I completed my degree at USC in Interactive Media and Game Design, and now reside in Cape Town. As you might guess from the not-so-short list preceding this sentence, I grew up super multi-cultural. Professionally and inter-personally, I insist on multi-cultural spaces as much as I can manage; diverse perspective have made me who I am today. I love working across disciplines and strongly value the celebration of our differences as people - we are better because of them. (Also I don't have a beard anymore, and my friend who takes the best pictures of me is on the other side of the world :')
I've spent most of my time in games working in various design positions, ranging from map and level design, combat design and balancing, narrative design, overall experience design, sound design, and various flavours of production. I've taken game ideas from paper prototypes to finished products and am practiced in an iterative and concentric design process. I love making games, playing games, thinking about games, laughing about games I play and make, (crying about games I play and make), and hope that in making games, I can help make the world a better place.