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COMBAT DESIGNER • LEVEL DESIGNER • NARRATIVE DESIGNER • FILMMAKER
Richard
Wang
Background
Hi there! I’m Richard, a USC student and Indie developer seeking gameplay, combat, and narrative design internships in the games industry. I have a background specializing in character / enemy design, cinematics, and quest / encounter sequencing.
Feel free to contact me using either of the methods below!
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Select a project to see the breakdown
Overdawn
Design · Narrative · Art · Usability
2.5D bullet hell set in a voxelized cyberpunk world.
Floodsong
Narrative
A high-velocity third person action adventure where you surf through tsunamis, parkour over ruins, and battle leviathans.
Thang!
Design · Narrative
Explosive freeze tag party game with chaotic power ups
Unchained: Tale of Enra
Design · Narrative
Turn / negotiation based action RPG set in a fantasy world.
Punkrocker
Design · Engineering
3D rhythm-based parry game set in cyber-disco.
Overdawn
2.5D bullet hell set in a voxelized cyberpunk world.
Design · Narrative · Art · Usability
Highlights
Masterworks of Horror
PvP card battler inspired by classic horror literature.
Design · Art
Highlights
Floodsong
A high-velocity third person action adventure where you surf through tsunamis, parkour over ruins, and battle leviathans.
Narrative
Highlights
What I did
Narrative Design: Global documentation, flow charts
Thang!
Explosive freeze tag party game with chaotic power ups
Design · Narrative
Highlights
Unchained: Tale of Enra
Turn / negotiation based action RPG set in a fantasy world.
Design · Narrative
What I did
Combat Design: Ability documentation, enemy design
Level Design: Mock-up sketches, sequencing documentation
Narrative Design: Character documentation, scriptwriting and dialogue
Doodle Cards
Turn-based drawing game with power-ups
Art
Highlights
Punkrocker
3D rhythm-based parry game set in cyber-disco.
Design · Engineering
Highlights
Icarus
A son argues his ambitions to his father a day before Icarus's fall.
Writer & Director
Background
Icarus is an animated short I wrote inspired from the classic Greek myth. As director, I recruited a team of 8 artists, providing creative direction for three disciplines: Storyboard / Animation, Background Art, and Character Design.
Storyboard & Animation
Compilation reel
Drop the reel here as MP4 (H.264 + AAC).
Background Art
Character Design
Icarus - flight and expression sheet
Art by Alice Zhou
Father and Son - final design
Art by Michelle Wang
Sheep - final design
Art by Luis Saucedo“Close up of a sheep bleating and grazing.”
Daedalus - iterations
Daedalus - iteration 1
Art by Alice ZhouRobed figure - silhouette studies and collar detail.
Daedalus - second iteration
Art by Michelle WangScript
Full PDFEXT. SHORE - NIGHT
The SON stands in shallow water, striking the crook into the sea when the tide comes in repeatedly, trying to catch a fish. The FATHER walks down from the hill and approaches his SON.
FATHER How many times do I have to tell you?
SON I almost have it!
As the FATHER gets closer…
FATHER That is no spear!
…The SON stabs the crook into the sea, shattering the handle in half. He grabs and lifts the short end, revealing an impaled fish. The FATHER reaches his son and snatches the broken crook from his hands.
FATHER (cont’d) You will let go of these foolish dreams. You are no soldier, no hero.
SON And you? Does a hero pick droppings and starve? Are you a hero?
FATHER I am your father.
The FATHER places his hands on his SON’s shoulders.
FATHER (cont’d) And you are my boy. My one son–
SON But I will not be your failure.
The SON takes the crook and fish and walks up the hill, back towards the house. The FATHER sighs and looks out into the sea.
EXT. FIELD - MORNING
Next day. Close up of a sheep bleating and grazing. The FATHER walks through the herd, bent, picking up droppings. The SON is behind him, at a distance. A strong gust of wind shifts the tall grass at his feet.
EXT. OCEAN - MORNING
A short shot of ICARUS gliding above the sea floor. He suddenly flies upwards.
EXT. FIELD - MORNING
The wind begins picking up on the field. The SON looks out at the city, at the path leading up to the city, then up at the sun when a silhouette - ICARUS - flies across it and towards the sea. Smoke begins billowing from the boy’s wings as he loses altitude, once again seen through the reflection of the SON’s eyes. The FATHER too rises from the herd, looking at the boy who touched the sun as he plunges into the ocean.
INT. HOUSE - KITCHEN - MORNING
Enter FATHER. He washes his face with water from a bucket. The fish that the SON caught is hung hooked above the cabinet. The FATHER looks out the window at the sun-specked sea, at the distant sailboats and seagulls, having a moment of spectacle even for himself. Then… he looks down the horizon, into the fields, at his son, bent double, picking up droppings in the herd.
Nim
A photographer who can no longer accept simple Beauty returns to the same beach, from afternoon to midnight.
Writer
Stills
Script
Full PDFPROLOGUE
Audio: “Caravan” - Duke Ellington (first half). Blackout. A quote fades into the screen.
“In silence, what you deem fit is therefore yours to take.”
“In whatever that emptiness may be, know that I shall not frown. But in spoken silence, you shall Hear.”
Blackout.
“Cry, and realize what young contentment now as woe. Breath, and I shall know whatever Truth you once renounced, and rejoice.”
Blackout.
“For I, there is nothing and only nothing to fear, nothing to doubt.”
The screen favors a title: “Nim”
ACT 1 - SCENE 1: MONOLOGUE
Blackout. There is a faint clicking and rattling which abruptly stops. A speaker’s voice fades in.
MC (V.O.) “I am not a photographer - for I can no longer conform to that acceptance of simple Beauty.”
There is a pause. The camera focuses on a static frame/photo of a beach. Monologue continues.
MC (V.O.) “When you surrender to the camera, when your eyelids fringe the tender lip of the lens, you should not be greeted with stasis; that is to disrespect the humble instrument, chastising it, with no trepidation for what is to consequence; to castrate art from its unfulfilled purpose; to present reality in any form where the enlightened audience can no longer say: “I get it.”, and thereby gaze into the veiled fault of our world; well that … that is unacceptable.”
The beach abruptly jumps to life. We become aware of the sound of a lingering eardrum of an urban setting: traffic, light rain, chatter, sirens, etc. Despite the camera’s focus on a beach.
MC (V.O.) “Ah. So now you can see. It is Beauty - in much more than a singular modest, poor, wrinkling frame. It is in terms of the complex, and henceforth in terms of the undesirable - the ugly and wretched.”
Honor
GRAEL I’ve fought and lost wars. But I always did what I believed in my heart was just, even if it drove me away from the one soul that I believed kindred to mine. Sometimes I wonder if it was ever worth it. When you’re left alone in the world with nothing but your code, how do you live with yourself?
MARLOW Honor is suffering. When you walk our path, expect no celebration or kinship, but the mud in your boots and scars in your soles. Yet we walk it regardless knowing that those who come after us will not have to. We may be buried in shallow graves with none to mourn us, but at least we might feel the sun rise for the day we suffered for. For that I live.
Pressure
GRAEL No matter how heavy your armor, my flames will smelt it down to the crude steel it was conceived from. Lay down your arms, ser. If I were you, I wouldn’t test yourself against a Roadmaster.
MARLOW Sorcery is an illusion used by men too weak to wield steel. You rely on the totems and scriptures of dead men to ward off your foes, yet you cannot rely on yourself. When your tomes are burned and your spells rendered useless, where will you turn, coward?
Overdawn
Primary antagonist narrates over launch cinematic.
BLACK SCREEN.
PINKILL “Aetherbounds die as any human would.”
SCENE 1: Koi is seen bleeding out in the penthouse and clutching her pulsating core. Front shot of THEO walking towards her as his hands light up.
PINKILL “They bleed.”
SCENE 2: Koi looks up at REV in the final room of Doyama. REV unsheathes his katana.
PINKILL “They’re forgotten.”
SCENE 3: KOI stares up at a floating PINKILL in Aetherspace, above her army of Titans.
PINKILL “Replaced.”
SCENE 4: KOI meeting the TRUE TITAN in Aetherspace.
PINKILL “Rebuilt.”
Blackout.
PINKILL “And it goes on and on.”
SCENE 5: KOI dashes out the penthouse elevator and fanfires two bodyguards → KOI shoots an explosive barrel during a gangster shootout in the subway station → KOI fighting THEO in the penthouse.
PINKILL “We’re all tragically human…” “But you?”
SCENE 6: Flashback to young KOI, THEO, REV, and VELENA sitting on a rooftop facing the Andrean city skyline.
PINKILL “You are the exception.”
SCENE 7: KOI faces a fully assembled ARCHANGEL.
PINKILL “You can be so much more.”
CUT TO BLACK.
.– …. .- - / .– .- … / …. — – . / .-.. .. -.- .
Home? Stew and Mud Corporal looked at each other, then at Pink, unsure of whether it was a test or if Pink really was just a kid like they were. Either way, it was hard for them to think about home, as if their memories were turned and twisted by the changing waves. Stew was from a small town without a name, a few miles outside of another nameless town and a long way away from nowhere. His mother had red hair and his brother did too; an older man would always be in the kitchen every morning and gone in the afternoon, but his hair was never the same. Still, nobody in the house had hair like Stew’s. Mud Corporal grew up without a name in a place without rain and without labels, where the ground was cracked and the sky was nude and the air was thick with the stench of sweaty hides and droppings and ivory. An older herder with no name showed him the ways of work, how to plow through the crust of the earth so that mud could flow and with it eddies of brown water and how to drink his own urine so that something else wouldn’t need to. When the herder grew old, sick, and tired, he named the tall boy two words, one from a language no one knew and one from a poster he had seen for a movie from a place where there was rain and men who were tall and blonde and called each other names like ‘Corporal.’ Home was nowhere. So was this ship, in a sea too far from home, and yet here these boys were with names that were granted to them, telling stories while their memories still lived. For a few seconds, as they sat, side-by-side, in silence, home did not seem too far as long as their names persisted in time.
The sun was half-set when Serge Varden drew his fourteenth cigarette of the day and had emptied his canteen of whiskey. He coughed up a clot of murkish phlegm into a tin can and put on his tattered gray uniform which was missing both cufflinks and all its buttons, all before bringing a warm, rusty razor to his cheeks and shaving off patches of cloudy white stubble. When he had cleaned and dressed himself, Varden would spend a great deal of time examining in a mirror the scars he had above his cheekbone and across his forehead, as if quiet reflection would eventually bring back memories of a war fought in a past life. But no, it never came to him— nothing ever did. Not the taste of a whiskey that wasn’t bitter. Not the feeling of his husky running its fur through his calloused hands. Not even the woman he once loved. Not her beauty. Not her voice. Not her hair, which was as white as the snow he found her buried in. When he first joined Pink, Stew, and Mud Corporal, it was clear he wanted nothing more than another canteen to forget that he’d soon be leading these boys to their deaths.
-. .- – . .—-. … / .–. .. -. -.- .-.-.-
Your Cat
A man tries to win someone back after proposing to them the night before.
Full PDF10: EXT. PUBLIC SQUARE - MORNING
Morning, in the same square. DIEGO is sitting upright, shaking his leg, looking at his phone. People pass left and right, but not the person he’s waiting for. Until there she is. ANNIE, wearing her Pepperdine sweater. DIEGO’s eyes light up and he stands.
ANNIE What do you want with me, Diego?
DIEGO I just wanted to talk.
ANNIE Then talk.
DIEGO What I asked that day, I didn’t think it through. I’m sorry.
ANNIE Its ok.
ANNIE sits down. DIEGO sits down next to her.
DIEGO I just want things to go back to the way they were.
ANNIE Why are you even with me, Diego?
DIEGO Because I really like you.
ANNIE Do you like me or the idea of dating me?
DIEGO How- how can you even ask that?
ANNIE Because I don’t know what you want Diego- you don’t even know what you want! You come home every night from a different station working a different job and nobody knows where you’ve gone- not me, not your parents.
DIEGO Because I’m scared, Annie.
ANNIE Scared of what?
DIEGO Everything!
DIEGO’s exclamation turns a few heads. He lowers his tone.
DIEGO (CONT’D) My parents used to say that I could go anywhere and do anything I wanted when I grew up. Next thing I know, they’re telling me to go somewhere across the country for four years. Then they’ll stop asking me to come home. And suddenly I’ll have a place of my own, working the same lousy job every day. And it’ll never be the same-
ANNIE But that’s life Diego.
DIEGO Then I don’t want anything to do with it.
ANNIE You can’t keep walking away from responsibility.
DIEGO Isn’t that what you wanted?
ANNIE But right now all I am is your way of moving on, Diego, of you stabilizing your life. And I can’t do that right now.
DIEGO Why not?
ANNIE Because I have my whole life ahead of me. And you do too. I can’t be your world, Diego.
DIEGO And yet you are.
ANNIE takes out a cigarette and struggles to light it. She gives up and lets out a deep sigh.
ANNIE I think I’m gonna go.
DIEGO Where are you going?
ANNIE I don’t know. Back to university. Back to Cat Town. I don’t know and I don’t care. Anywhere but here.
DIEGO What about Your Cat?
ANNIE You can keep her.
ANNIE begins to leave.
DIEGO Annie?
ANNIE stops.
ANNIE Don’t come home, Diego.
ANNIE leaves. DIEGO is left alone in the plaza, looking off into the distance.