Matt Kelly is a Systems and Gameplay Designer currently working on unannounced MMORPGs at ArtCraft Entertainment in Austin, TX.

A selection of work from before unannounced projects, between 2018-2021

Crowfall

I joined the Crowfall Team in August of 2020 and stayed aboard until November of 2021, during which time some of my contributions were as follows:

  • Created and maintained Combat Abilities using a proprietary visual scripting language in Unity

  • Aided in reworking multiple classes with a focus on providing meaningful choices for the player

  • Reverse engineered existing systems to create an Economy Model, designed to predict player behavior

  • Responsible for the GDDs for new Systems and System Reworks, some of which were posted publicly on the forums as listed below:

  • Reworked the New Player Experience based on metrics, creating many new Quests, NPCs, Encounters, rewards, and more to improve early Player Retention

RPG Dice: Heroes of Whitestone

After working on 3 mobile game prototypes for KingsIsle Entertainment, one stood above the rest. Following an extremely successful prototype, I was a part of turning this game into a fully featured mobile RPG. Some of my contributions were as follows:

  • Responsible for documentation of game systems, including combat and multiple progression systems.

  • Created the structure of the company’s data in Excel, keeping strict technical restrictions in mind

    • Data sheets created include: Heroes, Stats, Abilities, Gear, Dice, and Progression

  • Developed Economy Model, Combat Model, Equations and Hero stat curves

  • Tasked with improving our workflow for Ability creation and teaching other designers to work within that system

  • Responsible for design and implementation of Characters, Abilities, and Equipment

Mobile Prototypes

Much of my time at KingsIsle was spent in rapid iteration on mobile game prototypes that were created and launched in an effort to gauge early player retention through their FTUE, as well as through to D7. Being part of this process granted me an incredible experience of designing a majority of the Systems for these prototypes on a short, agile development cycle. Though one of these games became RPG Dice: Heroes of Whitestone listed above, there were 3 Projects before that. My contributions to these prototypes were as follows:

  • Responsible for Systems Documentation for a majority of the game Systems in the prototypes, from Combat, to Progression, and all Itemization.

  • Lead multiple feature-based strike teams with the goal of maintaining quality during a rapid iteration process.

  • Created the Economy Models and Combat Models for all prototypes.

  • Responsible for Hero Design and Combat Design of all Prototypes

  • Designed and implemented the Enemies and Encounters

War Goonz

I joined the War Goonz team in July of 2018 and worked with the team on live-ops of this Strategy Battler mobile game. Some of my contributions to War Goonz were as follows:

  • Aided an existing team in live ops for this soft-launched mobile title

  • Took part in discussions to shape the direction of Hero balance and Tower design

Contact me

matthewkelly95@gmail.com
(512) 985-8398