John Salagaj
Games, Mods, and Experiences
The Grand Master
Responsibilities:
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The Grand Master is a merchant style, resource management game with action/adventure elements.
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Spearhead the design team to establish systems, narrative, and enemy behavior.
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Design and Prototype the core economic and combat systems.
The player takes on the role of the Grand Master, a retired adventurer who settles down in the small village of Yhomstad to live comfortably. The Grand Master opens a shop to help the people of Yhomstad live and prepare for adventures of their very own.
My role on this project was Lead Designer, mainly focusing on Gameplay and UX. I designed the Merchant system where the player can sell items to villagers and other interesting customers, the Adventurer system where the player can send out adventurers on quests to learn about the world they are in and get items for the shop, and the Monster Fighting system where the player is put in an exciting combat sequence. I was also incharge of making all three of these systems fit together to deliver a rewarding and satisfying experience.
The Grand Master was a year long project where I was on a 12 man team. We brought this game to Champlain College's QA Lab often and were usually told to make the villagers and adventurers more fleshed out to make the player feel like they are interacting with people opposed to just reading boring text on a screen. We also got a lot of feedback on our Bosses where players would help us balance them between too difficult or too easy to beat.
The Grand Master is currently available on Steam Greenlight and we hope to have it on Steam soon!
Producer:
Andrew Purnell
Design Team:
John Salagaj
Anthony Bennie
Jedediah Myers
Dennis Ngo
Riley Bufton
Art Team:
Aaron Higgins
Benjamin Hiller
Amanda Deep
Programming Team:
John William "Dmitri" Kazanecki
Gabrielle Kenney
Daniel Covert