dragon racing come to life
Role: project lead, programming, mechanics design, level design
Untamed Skies is a demo project that aims to capture the fantasy of soaring through spectacular environments on the back of a dragon at high speeds, performing tricks, using momentum, and mastering the aerodynamics of your winged mount.
Developed at Sheridan College by myself, 2 other classmate designers, as well as 5 additional students filling roles such as project management and sound design, this project took place over the summer of 2025 as a capstone project in the Game Level Design graduate program.
The project was shown at the CNE 2025 Gaming Garage.
from passion to reality
Pitching a dragon flying game about attaching and detaching from your dragon
Starting out as a passion project I pitched at Sheridan, heavily inspired by the How to Train your Dragon series, Untamed Skies became a project for me to develop my game design skills, Unreal Engine programming, as well as level design capabilities.
My roles on the Untamed Skies team were project leader, programmer, as well as co-level designer. I took responsibility for deciding the direction of the overall game, all programming related tasks, and the ‘Dragon Canyon’ tutorial level.
score and style points
Dragon riding with numeric goals in mind
The game features a functional gameplay loop, but in order to “gamify” that loop, a score and letting grading system is included. This not only adds replayability but gives players goals to strive towards - style and speed. The game features an end screen to show the results off with some suspense.
There are several categories that contribute to the overall letter grade & score.
Combo Points:
the foundation of your score, combo points are collected by doing consecutive tricks and/or actions. Most flight mechanics reward combo points, increase the combo multiplier, and reset the combo time limit to encourage consecutive actions
Collisions:
Collisions occur when they player rides their dragon into an obstacle, flies out of bounds, or performs a level out too late (flies into the ground). Collisions reduce 5% of your total score each, encouraging the player to fly without accidents.
Completion Time:
This is where score multipliers are determined. Depending on how fast you complete the level you can earn a total score multiplier.
6 minutes or more: C rank - x 1.0
5 minutes or more: B rank - x 1.4
4 minutes or more: A rank - x 1.6
Less than 4 minutes: S rank - X 2.0
Letter Grade Calculation:
After your total score is counted up you get a letter grade for the score range you achieved.
Less than 60000: C
Less than 80000: B
Less than 100000: A
100000 or more: S
gameplay footage
