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Shipping a Major Game Rework Update for Dwelling

Technical leadership, gameplay design, enemy AI, production planning, and release execution

Unity C# Gameplay Jira Agile
Steam →
StudioSaturday Games (Kodextra Solutions)
RoleLead Gameplay Programmer
EngineUnreal Engine 5

Overview

As Lead Gameplay Programmer, I owned technical delivery of a major post-launch update for Dwelling. My responsibilities spanned planning, gameplay implementation, technical leadership, and release execution.

Alongside feature development, the update focused on improving gameplay quality, production standards, and long-term maintainability.

Technical Ownership

The update required coordination across multiple disciplines and systems.

I was responsible for:

  • Owned the design and implementation of a new enemy archetype for the maze experience, from gameplay concept and behaviour design through AI implementation and tuning.
  • Defining technical scope
  • Breaking work into milestones and deliverables
  • Sprint planning and task breakdown
  • Identifying risks and preventing costly rework
  • Supporting developers through implementation

A significant part of the role involved making technical decisions early enough to keep the project moving without accumulating future technical debt.

Rebuilding the Maze Experience

One of the update’s major additions was a redesign of the game’s maze experience.

Rather than simply adding content, the objective was to create a stronger gameplay loop while fitting naturally within the existing game.

This involved both gameplay implementation and design collaboration, balancing player experience against production constraints.

Raising Production Quality

Beyond new content, a large portion of development focused on improving the existing game.

Key contributions included:

  • Resolving 40+ issues related to gameplay, content, and presentation issues
  • Improving gameplay reliability and overall polish
  • Reducing future maintenance burden through systemic fixes

While less visible than new features, these improvements had a significant impact on the quality of the final release.

Cinematic Pipeline Improvements

The project originally relied on Blender playblasts for cinematic content.

As part of the update, I coordinated the migration of all cinematics to Unreal Engine rendered sequences.

The result was:

  • Improved visual quality
  • Better consistency across presentation
  • A more scalable pipeline for future content production
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