Alina Ilchegulova — Game Design & Programming
Game worlds, player goals and gameplay systems for small teams
Game designer with programming skills
I help small game teams turn fictional worlds and player goals into playable experiences. I combine game design with programming, connecting worldbuilding, scenarios and levels to the systems players use.
These four projects show that work at different scales: a 3D shooter, a platformer, a tabletop RPG and my graduation game concept. I am looking for collaborators on game design and gameplay implementation.
Isle of Dreams: Beetle Battle
First-person 3D shooter · Team project
My role: game design, level design and gameplay systems
A magical garden becomes a battlefield when pests invade the player’s town. The player moves towards a confrontation with the Slug King.
Design challenge: connect movement abilities with the spaces and encounters where players use them.
Movement shapes the route
Approach: I worked on the tutorial, main level, arena and encounters around dash, super jump and rocket jump. These abilities offer different ways to cross the garden, avoid danger and reach difficult areas.
My contribution also covered pickups, checkpoints, health and respawn, with supporting work on interfaces, menus, sound and particle effects.
Outcome: movement, level layouts and supporting gameplay systems formed my contribution to the team game. The screenshot below shows the shared in-game environment.
Level-design document: the route spirals through the islands as the player gains abilities before reaching the boss. Original team presentation in Russian.
Merlin in Mexico
Adventure platformer · Team project
My role: gameplay programming
Merlin travels to Mexico in search of immortality, even if it means entering the world of the dead.
Implementation challenge: translate the team’s movement and ability design into character behaviour, camera response and supporting game systems.
Double jump and glide
Approach: I implemented the airborne jump and gliding behaviour. Holding jump slows the fall, pulls the camera back slightly and gives the player more control over the landing trajectory.
Jump again → hold to glide → steer the landing
This connects three parts of traversal: player input, character motion and camera behaviour.
Outcome: programming across the game
My implementation work extended to platforms, abilities, scripted events, menus and saving, plus sound and visual effects integration.
Merlin is my broader programming case: these systems support the team’s platformer from movement through to progression. The playable build is linked at the end of this portfolio.
Merlin in Mexico — double jump and gliding in the team game.
The Road to the Heavenly Realm
Tabletop role-playing game · Team project
My role: worldbuilding, narrative and scenario design
Former gods, exiled from heaven, seek to reclaim their place in a late-medieval world.
Design challenge: turn the setting and the characters’ lost status into reasons for players to act.
I developed the lore, locations, player identities, world logic, goals and several playable stories. The card mechanics were developed by my teammate.
Lore becomes a player goal
Approach: in one scenario, a cult reveals divine secrets and tries to resurrect an ancient god. Stopping it gives the exiled gods a way to win heaven’s approval.
Lost divine status → seek approval → investigate the cult → stop the resurrection
Outcome: the scenario connects a specific conflict with the characters’ larger ambition. The lore becomes both a reason to act and a direction for play. This is a narrative-design example from the team project.
The Garden Grows on Its Own
Graduation project · Concept development
My work: game concept, visual research and sketches
A world small enough to fit on a table, yet too large to understand from the outside.
A mountain garden exists both as a first-person environment and as a miniature in a gallery. Changes to the model reshape the routes inside.
Design challenge: make the same landscape a place to explore and an object the player can change.
One garden, two scales
Approach: the player explores the garden, finds a blocked route, then returns to the miniature to alter it.
Explore → find an obstacle → change the model → return
In a planned interaction, a splinter placed across the miniature’s ditch becomes a bridge inside the garden. Other proposed interactions use light and wind to reveal routes.
A familiar landscape made strange
Exaggerated moss, rounded hills, clear water and deliberately constructed architecture define the visual direction. Cool greens, blue shadows and shifting light create the feeling of a private discovery.
My pencil studies below explore the gallery and the miniature as two views of the same world.
Outcome: a concept ready for a focused prototype
The current work includes the setting, proposed interaction loop, visual research and my original sketches. These are concept-stage materials.
Next step: prototype one blocked route, one change to the miniature and its effect inside the garden. This will test the central interaction before the world expands.
Let’s make a game together
I can contribute to worldbuilding, scenarios and level design, alongside programming work on gameplay systems.
If you are building a game and looking for a collaborator, email me with a short description of the project and the role you have in mind.
alina.ilchegulova@gmail.com
