Hamsterballin'

Unreal Engine 5

Steam Page

Hamsterballin’ is a multiplayer, physics-based arcade racing game where players roll, bounce, and race through imaginative toy-themed tracks, using momentum, shortcuts, and chaotic power-ups to outmaneuver opponents and reach the finish line first.

Design Focus: Game Design, Level Design

Engine: Unreal Engine 5

Development: 5 months

Team Size: 43 developers

Design

Design tracks with hidden shortcuts and alternate routes that reward experimentation, allowing players to discover faster strategies and improve their times through repeated play.

Skill Expression & Replayability

Dynamic Track Experiences

Use unconventional track elements like Ribbon Road to make the environment itself part of the gameplay and give individual tracks a distinct identity.

Competitive Player Interaction

Create mechanics and track layouts that encourage players to directly interact, disrupt one another, and create memorable moments during races.

Playful Power-Up Interactions

Create power-ups with clear individual purposes while allowing them to interact with other mechanics in interesting and strategically meaningful ways.

Successes

Worked effectively across disciplines, collaborating with programmers, artists, and other designers to prototype, implement, and iterate on gameplay features throughout development.
Used Blueprint and math skills to rapidly prototype mechanics such as Ribbon Road, allowing ideas to be tested in-engine before committing additional development resources.
Supported multiple track teams by helping implement and troubleshoot shared race logic, ensuring designers could reliably integrate core racing systems into their individual tracks.
Designed and iterated on gameplay mechanics that interacted with existing systems, including the Shield Power-Up, Gacha Balls, and track elements, while accounting for their impact on the wider racing experience.
Designed and iterated on two race tracks, using playtesting to refine track flow, readability, shortcuts, and opportunities for player skill expression.

Challenges

A compressed development schedule limited the amount of time available for final polish and iteration, requiring careful prioritization of the changes that would have the greatest impact on the player experience.
Working across multiple track teams introduced different implementation needs and edge cases, requiring shared systems to remain flexible while still behaving consistently across the game.
Some mechanics required significant experimentation before reaching their final form, making it important to prototype quickly and identify unsuccessful approaches without consuming unnecessary production time.
Balancing feature development with track responsibilities created competing priorities, particularly near milestones when both gameplay systems and level content required iteration.

Key Takeaways

Rapid prototyping is most valuable when paired with technical implementation skills, allowing design ideas to be evaluated in-engine before significant production time is committed to them.
Shared gameplay systems should be established and validated across different use cases early, especially when multiple teams depend on the same underlying functionality.
When development time is limited, prioritize polish around the mechanics and moments players interact with most rather than attempting to improve every part of the experience equally.
Cross-disciplinary communication is essential when designing interconnected systems, and involving the relevant disciplines early makes it easier to identify technical constraints, iterate quickly, and arrive at stronger solutions.

Trailer

what i accomplished

my Role

Technical Designer

Game Design

Designed core functionality for the Shield Power-Up, including interactions with the D20 and Bomb power-ups.
Designed the mechanic for smashing Gacha Balls during gameplay.
Prototyped and designed Ribbon Road, a unique cornerstone track piece featuring a wavy, flowing roadway that dynamically changes the driving surface.
Collaborated with the team to prototype, test, and iterate on mechanics based on gameplay needs and player feedback.

Level Design

Designed and iterated on two of three multiplayer race tracks, refining layouts through playtesting and feedback.
Developed track flow, obstacles, and gameplay moments to support competitive racing and player interaction.
Iterated on pacing, readability, and difficulty to create tracks that were easy to understand but rewarding to master.