Technical Experience
Pablo Acosta 2002-Present
My name is Pablo Acosta, and video games have been a core part of my daily life for almost all of my life. Ever since I was little, I loved to dissect my favorite games and imagine the ideas that were going through the developers’ heads. “Why is this level organized this way?” “Why can my character do this?” “How did this boss come about?” were just a couple of the myriad of questions I asked myself then (and still today). My passion for this medium has defined who I am, and I now work to help it define others!
As for what I love about gaming itself, the ability games give to truly inhabit other worlds and feel yourself to be a completely new person or being is definitely the best part, in my opinion. I play most genres as well, RPGs and JRPGs, Any type of Shooter, Adventure, Turn-based, Rogue-likes and lites, etc… The only genre I don’t vibe with really is strategy games. Those I don’t touch. But yeah, gaming has defined who I am in a lot of ways, and within the medium itself, there are even bigger highlights of this.
Game Designer 2022-Present
I am a game designer specializing in level, mechanics, and systems design. I am currently a Clark University student and just finished my BFA in 2024 and I’m now in the middle of working towards my MFA, honing my skills through study work and helping with various projects.
Project Timeline
Fall 2022 - Gamble
Gamble was my first proper studio project, and it is the first time I truly got to spread my wings when it came to Unity game development. It is where I also learned the importance of constant communication with all my team members. The ones I mostly had to communicate with were our art and programming people. Art, because they made the assets I used for the level (and they helped me learn Tiled!). Programming, because I playtested and did issue identification for a lot of what they implemented in the game, and my level. My biggest contribution to this project, outside of my level, was helping our assets artist make the assets for the level. I was constantly in open communication in case they had a question on what assets they needed to do and how to make them look.
Spring 2023 - Garden of Táozi
Garden of Táozi is where I learned to tackle mechanics design and implementation. “How would this make the game more fun?” and “Does this gel well with the game’s other, already implemented, mechanics?” were probably the two most common questions. Scope creep was also a major issue we needed to contend with when coming up with any of these ideas (an issue I would later learn is pretty common in game dev in general). After this, I worked on 2 concepts for the game’s final level. These would later be inherited by other level designers, and I would be there to help and advise them as they finalized the product.
Fall 2023 - Gothic Nights
Going from isometric 2D to full 3D to then back to simple 2D sidescrolling was a bit of a rollercoaster, to say the least. Moreover, Gothic Nights being a Metroidvania, made for very interesting changes on my design philosophy. The producer for this project was also the lead designer, and they were the person I had to communicate with the most to follow their vision for the game. I remember they tasked me to actually play through some Metroidvanias before I joined the project. I wasn’t very educated in their design philosophies before working on this, but by the end, I kind of felt like an expert!
September 15-17, 2023 - Spirit Farm
Spirit Farm was my first game jam game ever! It started the trend for me of attending game jams every couple months to make something quick with like-minded people. For Spirit Farm, I mainly helped the team come up with the idea of the game and helped draw the map we needed to have made for the game. After this, the stuff I made for the game was strictly related to the game’s main menu and UI (this is where I learned about Aseprite!). However, whenever the team had any questions about the game’s design, I was always sure to be there to answer.
Spring 2024 - Street Rider
With Street Rider, I now stepped in to make a racing game track. Not a normal race track, though, but one within an 80s-style dystopian cyberpunk city. However, this project was especially different than others because the beginning of it for me involved a lot of course correction with some of the design aspects and level designs. For example, while making my level for the game, the lead asked me to work on another, already-made level. They essentially wanted me to add more city buildings to it to make it look better for a soon-to-be showcase of the game. However, looking at it for a couple of minutes, I saw there were problems with lighting and vividness on the level as well. City was too dark in some parts and too bright in others, while having samey same-looking buildings with no colorful advertisements. Something I ended up going through and fixing on top of adding more to the city itself, as originally asked.
January 19-21, 2024 - Escape from Alex Bank
EfAB was my second game jam game. A 2D side-scroller where you rob a bank and need to escape in a short time as a sly raccoon! Here, there’s also an event that really stuck with me, and it was the reverse of Street Rider’s. With Street Rider, I was identifying problems a lot, while with EfAB, it was fellow devs identifying issues with my design. This was mainly because of the third room you go into while escaping. I simply did not design it well. I wanted a genuine wall for the player that was difficult to go through. However, instead, you could say I made a fortress. It was too difficult, and I vividly remember some of my teammates calling out that part of the game specifically, which led me to do some revisions. Eventually, though, we fixed it, and the level was much better for it!
February 2024-May 2024 - Rodent Rampage
Rodent Rampage was a side project I helped on for a couple of months with a very small team. We were developing an update that addressed some player feedback. The feedback I took on to correct were the store upgrade prices for the player and the lack of obstacle variety in the game. Rodent Rampage was a lot like Jetpack Joyride, and it had been almost a decade since I played that genre of game, so I went back and gave it a shot while on this project. I learned from them that you always have to feel you are getting something out of every run, and if you don't, you need to be close. Through that experience, I tweaked the store prices to be more lenient and the currency earned while playing to be more generous.
January 31-February 2, 2025 - Frost Rod
Frost Rod was the last game jam I have tackled thus far, and my favorite one ever! It is a winter-themed racing game, and for it, I designed and built the main race track. Probably my most vivid memory of working on Frost Rod was being with my team and simply coming up with ideas for it. We were at it for a while, but I remember one of my team members coming up with the overheating mechanic, and I instantly snapped to it like glue. I usually like to contribute a lot of ideas myself (like I did for Garden of Táozi); however, when I hear something I know is good from someone else, I always try to validate them for it and attach myself to that idea as well. Frost Rod was a major case of this, because I don’t know if the overheating mechanic would have stayed if I didn’t push for it alongside the team member who first came up with it.
Education
July 2018 - ID Tech (Extra)
This was my first time truly working on game dev. Where it all truly started. This was a small summer camp in Atlanta that lasted 2 weeks. My design work within this camp was in the first week. That time had me involved in learning Unreal Engine 4 and creating an FPS multiplayer map in it.
July 2019 - SCAD University
During July 2019, between my Junior and Senior years of high school, I went to a summer program at SCAD University. This program allowed high school students to start and finish 2 college-level courses within 5 weeks, and actually earn their respective credits early. The 2 courses I took there were art-related. One was a still life drawings class and the other one was an art design class.
August 2020-May 2021 - Becker College
I started my college journey with Becker. My first and only year at Becker was taken online because it took place during the lockdown from COVID-19. My studies during this year consisted of the basics of game development, its history, and game design. Eventually, Becker closed a year after I joined, and Clark University bought out the department I was studying in, so I moved there.
August 2021-Present - Clark University
At Clark, I studied pretty much everything else I know as a game developer. It’s also where I actually put those learnings into practice. Every project shown on this portfolio is a showcase of that practice. From being a noob at Unity during my early BFA years, to now being an experienced UE5 developer in my MFA ones. I’ll be graduating with that MFA soon, too!
Soft Skills
Communication: Efficient in oral, written, contextual, visual, and active listening.
Critical Thinking: Problem identification, research, inference, and curiosity.
Interpersonal: Empathy, leadership, and conflict management.