Metal: Hellsinger
Platform: PC & Console Years: 2019–2023
I was first contracted by The Outsiders (Funcom's studio in Stockholm) as a sole UX Designer to help them overhaul the onboarding and early game in three months. The game went on to receive rave reviews and a 98% “Overwhelmingly Positive” Steam rating upon its release.
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The following year I joined the studio full-time as the UX Design Lead, while also managing the entire Design team.
Onboarding Overhaul
I joined the team near the end of the production of the award-winning game Metal: Hellsinger, and my first task was to redesign the game's onboarding. This was done through multiple rounds of user testing, gathering and synthesizing player feedback, and organising it across Miro boards and communicating and collaborating with all of the different crafts across the team for iteration and implementation before launch. And as a result of the valuable feedback we got from these playtests, we didn't just redo the onboarding — we also changed the entire UI layout for the HUD, as well as a range of other usability improvements across level design, combat design and game art. This led to improved player understanding of the game's base mechanics and a higher user retention, which no doubt contributed to the game's fantastic reception worldwide.
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Below are a number of the Miro boards I created during that time that showcase this process.
Game Mode: Leviathan
Post-launch, we developed a second game mode, called Leviathan, which introduced a lot of varied content, thus dramatically extending gameplay time — something our players had requested repeatedly. Since this mode was aimed at experienced players, the challenge here was to straddle the line between difficulty and accessibility carefully: it needed to be playable by everyone within our target audience, yet still difficult enough to compel and sustain the interest of our more hardcore players.
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We conducted a range of playtests for this game mode as well, and I then held usability tests to identify and understand specific pain-points. As a result, the majority of my time was spent re-designing the outer lobby, which had repeatedly been a point of confusion and overwhelm for players during testing.
DLC "Packaging" Integration
I played a key role in developing the game's DLC packaging, streamlining the complex process of packaging, integrating and surfacing DLC content across multiple platforms for players to easily find, buy and play. My efforts ensured a seamless experience for not just the players across PlayStation, Xbox, PC, and other platforms in accessing the game's DLC content (both within each respective platform's Store, as well as within the player's own Library) — but also for our development team itself, navigating the various stringent requirements and restrictions from each platform.
Gamescom: Cosplay & Concert
And if anybody happened to wonder who that sassy demon at the massive game launch concert at Gamescom 2022 was... It was me! What an incredible honour and mind-blowing experience it was to get to share the stage with several of my musical icons!
