Rise of the Angry Earth
Amazon Game Studios — Lead World Designer
Led multi-team development across Elysian Wilds open world content, new Soul Trials, and systemic expansion tech, aligning tone, mechanics, and replayability across narrative, combat, LiveOps, and server.
New World: Rise of the Angry Earth
A major DLC expansion focused on a transformed open-world region, new traversal expectations, and repeatable endgame beats. My work centered on zone leadership, systemic integration, and cross-discipline alignment from planning through shipped release.
Overview
Rise of the Angry Earth required coordinating new open-world content, new traversal patterns (mounts), and durable replayability, while maintaining compatibility with LiveOps, server constraints, and existing world pipelines.
Contributions
- Led design teams comprised of internal, vendor, and third-party teams with regular mentoring, engine onboarding, and review cycles for Elysian Wilds open world zone content
- Integrated mount mechanics into existing world pipelines in collaboration with mounts, gameplay, and server teams
- Placed mount restriction volumes in settlements and elite strongholds as part of the integration of the new mount mechanic
- Owned and integrated three new Soul Trials: Petrified Throne, Mahantaram’s Court, and End of New Eden
- Aligned tone, mechanics, and replayability with narrative, combat, LiveOps, and server teams
- Designed and implemented the Isle of Zurvan ECR point of interest
- Collaborated with environment art on brand new biomes and procedural vegetation visuals
- Collaborated with creatures, concept, and art teams on new creatures like the chameleon, firefly beetle, armored dragon, baby spriggan, and Hercyne enemy family
- Collaborated with vendors and engineering teams to deliver new features like the creature pounce mechanic
- Partnered with engineering and server to deliver completely new expansion technology features including a pre-season retraction of a zone, price-gating to the zone, and rework of existing systems
- Created and implemented the banana tree and the banana resource, which ultimately became a new, lucrative farming system for low-level players
- Produced modular documentation reused and improved for future initiatives
“His ideas are consistently fresh, creative, and thoughtful, pushing us to approach problems in new ways”
Isle of Zurvan
A purpose-built Elite Stronghold designed as a multi-level vertical group puzzle, tuned around coordinated navigation and escalating encounter pressure.
- Multi-level vertical layout with deliberate regroup points and readable “push / reset” beats
- Supports ECR-style repeatable flow with coordinated traversal and callouts
Beast Signets
An evolution of the Ancient Glyphs from Brimstone, adapted for Rise of the Angry Earth to support new interaction language, traversal beats, and puzzle-driven exploration.
- Designed the Beast Signets interaction language as an expansion-era evolution of the Ancient Glyphs foundation
- Invented and implemented the Glyph Bridge gimmick, a traversal puzzle that uses Beast Signets to create a readable, repeatable “build the path” moment
Videos
Outcomes
- Delivered a cohesive Elysian Wilds open world experience through multi-team coordination and consistent review cadence
- Shipped three Soul Trials with aligned replayability goals and integrated cross-team dependencies
- Integrated mounts into legacy world pipelines, including settlement and elite-stronghold restrictions for gameplay clarity and stability
- Expanded the creature roster and encounter language with new biomes, new enemy families, and new behaviors
- Introduced new interaction and traversal language via Beast Signets and the Glyph Bridge gimmick
- Created a low-level accessible farming economy lane via the banana tree + banana resource
- Improved future delivery velocity via modular documentation patterns and reusable production artifacts