Skydance's Behemoth

Skydance's BEHEMOTH

Role: Senior Game designer

Platform: PCVR, PSVR2, Quest 2, Quest 3

Tech: Unreal Engine 5 blueprint, Miro, Blender, Confluence, Perforce, JIRA

Time: 3 years

Launch Date: December 5th, 2024

Skydance's BEHEMOTH is a fantasy VR action RPG about slaying giant monsters to save a fallen kingdom from a deadly curse.

Dredstag Boss Encounter - Refining the Pacing and Flow of a Multi-Phase Boss Fight

My contributions

Took ownership of the encounter from alpha to final shippable state, refining its pacing, readability, and overall flow while preserving the established three-phase structure.
Improved player guidance across the fight by clarifying traversal paths, weak-point placement, objective transitions, and attack telegraphs in a constantly moving VR environment.
Partnered with animation, audio, VFX, art, tech art, and engineering to solve collision, climbability, visibility, and performance challenges on a giant skeletal boss.
Helped optimize and polish the encounter by managing attached gameplay elements, climbable regions, collision accuracy, and culling within the available VR performance budget.

Case Study: Reusing the ankle-bracelet interaction

(10:20 of playthrough video)

In the final phase, players needed to recognize that the boss’s wrist was their next destination, but the bare wrist did not provide a clear visual cue. I added a bracelet matching the ones players had already removed from the boss’s ankles earlier in the fight (see example at 1:55 of video). This reused an established visual and interaction pattern: players could identify the bracelet as meaningful, remove it, and reveal the grapple point beneath it. The change guided attention without adding a new tutorial and made the transition into the final climb feel like a natural extension of what the player had already learned.

Play video from 00:46

Weapon Forge - Diegetic UX for Weapon Upgrade Interaction

My contributions

Designed and refined the end-to-end weapon-forging flow, connecting upgrade selection, material use, heating, hammering, and completion into a cohesive VR interaction.
Simplified an initially complex, assembly-line-style process so players could complete forging from one station with minimal movement while preserving the fantasy of physically crafting a weapon.
Developed the diegetic UX for selecting upgrades and communicating requirements, balancing readability, comfort, system constraints, and the tactile feel of the experience.
Coordinated with systems design, UI/UX, engineering, animation, VFX, audio, and art to prototype, document, implement, and polish the feature.

Simplifying the forging flow without losing the fantasy

The original forging process required players to move through several separate stations, which made the experience feel slow and cumbersome in VR. I reorganized the flow so the full interaction could be completed from a single position: the player places their weapon, selects an upgrade, adds the required material, heats it, breaks away the outer shell with a hammer, and retrieves the finished weapon. We also explored letting players control the forge remotely through a carried scroll, but I moved away from that approach because it weakened the sense of physically making something. The final design reduced unnecessary movement and friction while keeping the tactile actions that made forging feel deliberate and rewarding.

Designing Tactile Lore Collectibles

Play video from 00:12

My contributions

Designed and prototyped interactive objects that rewarded exploration through varied VR gestures, tactile feedback, and environmental storytelling.
Developed reusable frameworks for both playful interactables and lore objects, connecting player verbs, sensory qualities, narrative context, and object responses.
Designed lore collectibles around character backstories and worldbuilding, using physical objects to make narrative memories feel grounded in the environment rather than detached from gameplay.
Adapted the original bespoke-object approach into the shipped Lore Skull system, working across design, engineering, animation, audio, VFX, and art to create a more scalable collectible pipeline.

Evolving bespoke lore objects into the shipped Lore Skull system

The original concept used unique objects tied to each memory, such as personal belongings that gained emotional meaning after the player heard the associated story. While this created strong environmental storytelling, producing a custom set of props, interactions, animation, audio, and effects for every collectible was not scalable. I helped refine the concept into the Lore Skull system that shipped in the final game. Players discover and physically crush a skull to release its memory, creating a consistent and recognizable interaction while preserving the tactile, embodied quality of VR storytelling. This solution reduced production cost, improved readability, and allowed the team to deliver the full collectible narrative across the game.

Scaling Cinematic Implementation Across Skydance's BEHEMOTH

My contributions

Completed the first-pass in-engine implementation for approximately 40 cinematics, including boss and miniboss introductions, hub conversations, establishing moments, and narrative encounters.
Helped develop and implement a reusable Set Piece Manager system for actor loading, visibility, sequence playback, cinematic mode, checkpoints, level streaming, and scene cleanup.
Worked deeply in Unreal Sequencer and Blueprint, coordinating animation, audio, engineering, level design, art, and direction to translate animatics into stable, polished VR scenes.
Created test levels, documentation, and walkthroughs to onboard other designers and external partners, enabling the team to divide scene polish across multiple contributors.

Designing the Nightscraper Elevator Scene

The Nightscraper elevator sequence needed to feel like a surprising, cinematic attack without taking the player out of the VR experience. I implemented and refined the sequence in Unreal, coordinating the elevator’s timing, the boss reveal, audio buildup, animation, collision, and the transition into the next area. Because players could still move, look away, or attempt to leave the elevator, the scene required safeguards that preserved immersion without making the player feel visibly restricted. I also worked to keep the boss consistent with gameplay by supporting its damaging scream—and the player’s ability to protect themselves by covering their ears—during the cinematic. Behind the scenes, the sequence required careful management of cinematic and gameplay boss actors, checkpoints, loading, visibility, and cleanup so the player could not reload below the elevator after the scene had already completed.