Game Designer
The Soldier Within
The Soldier Within is a third-person co-op PvE shooter designed to bring the intensity of squad-based combat experiences to mobile platforms. Inspired by games such as Helldivers and Ghost Recon, the project explores how tactical teamwork, coordinated abilities, and mission-driven gameplay can translate into an engaging mobile co-op experience.
The game is set in the midst the Kargil conflict, drawing inspiration from real locations and battlefronts from the 1999 war, placing players in the role of soldiers advancing through versatile terrains through the foothills and treachorous mountains to reclaim strategic enemy positions and end the conflict.
Players fight alongside friends and allied troops who you can control with squad commands, using a variety of weapons and battlefield abilities such as airstrikes and heavy support to complete missions and push the frontline forward. Targeted at young adult players, the game focuses on delivering a social, high-intensity cooperative shooter experience for mobile.
Project Overview
Platform : Mobile
Development Time : 2 Years (Unreleased)
Engine : Unreal Engine 5
Genre : Third Person Co-Op PvE Shooter
Team Composition : 35 member team
My Role
In my capacity as the Senior Game Designer on 'The Soldier Within', my responsibilities covered various roles across different phases of development.
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Pre-production - Contributed to the project from pre-production, using research to help define core gameplay mechanics, meta systems and establish the foundational gameplay loop, supporting the transition into full production.
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Gameplay and Tools Documentation - Authored detailed technical design documentation for core player-facing systems, including movement, combat, feedback, and AI behavior. Balanced creative direction with production constraints while specifying and documenting gameplay tooling requirements, ensuring designers could efficiently implement and tune systems.
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Level Design - Collaborated with Level Design to define level design pillars within technical constraints such as navmesh and area size requirements. Also contributed to planning and grayboxing key spaces, like boss encounters/arenas which were primarily driven by AI behavior and combat dynamics.
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Implementation and Tuning - Worked extensively in Unreal Engine to tune and balance gameplay systems using developer provided tools, applying final polish to align the player experience with the intended design vision. Established a structured communication pipeline for requesting and iterating on tool improvements.
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Animation and Audio POC - Worked with animation and audio teams to set requirements and integrate assets, ensuring the teams had clear requirements from development and design teams for crafting and iterating on animations and audio.
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Narrative - Worked with the Narrative team to shape mission pacing and ensure consistency in weapon design, NPC behaviors, and dialogue within the established Kargil-inspired setting.
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Bug tracking and Production - Managed issue tracking and bug logging processes, providing clear visibility on project status to developers and stakeholders, and helping ensure timelines and quality benchmarks were met.
Gameplay Showcase
These clips showcase gameplay across different missions, environments, and internal test scenarios highlighting AI behaviors and some core combat mechanics.
While the footage represents a vertical slice of the game, the full game featured fully functional systems including synchronous multiplayer (up to 4 players), voice chat, multiple weapon classes with customization and attachments and complete UI flows. At the point where development was paused, the project included 50+ missions across varied environments, supported by diverse enemy behaviours, boss encounters, and tools and special abilities to combat them like calling in support troops or air strikes.
