Zak Terry

Game Designer / Developer

+1 609 858 4352| zgtemail@gmail.com| 176 Andover Rd, Billerica, MA

Professional Profile

Games industry veteran with a decade of experience across a wide range of titles. I blend creativity and technical skill to solve design challenges and create fun player experiences. My software engineering background gives me a strong command of the tools needed to iterate quickly, and my passion lies in creating the surprise and excitement that keeps players engaged.

Key Skills & Education

Game Engines
Unity, Unreal, Godot
Languages
C, C++, C#, Blueprint, Lua, Python, Go, JavaScript, Java, GDScript
Tools
FMOD, Photoshop, Excel/Sheets
Source Control
git, Perforce

B.S. Computer Science

Rochester Institute of Technology

2011 – 2015

Experience

Design Lead / Co-founder

2024 – Present

Cephalopod Ink|Boston, MA

Founded a small indie game studio to make games the team is excited and passionate about. I handle the game design, writing, and some of the engineering work.

Hoard's LLC: Limited Labyrinth Corporation

  • A 2D puzzle game built in Unity following a minotaur who works at an office job making labyrinths.
  • Responsible for level and mechanic design.
  • Used feedback from over a thousand players across multiple conventions to create a puzzle progression which more intuitively taught mechanics to players. This resulted in a larger set of puzzles with a higher completion rate.
  • Responsible for all writing in the game. Found experts to interview on relevant topics, resulting in script changes that made the story more real-world relevant.
  • Implemented gameplay mechanics as I designed them, allowing for fast iteration times and adjustments. Smoothly split work with our team's engineer to allow us both to focus on most pressing priorities.
  • Created dialog authoring tool which drastically decreased cutscene implementation time.
  • Quickly prototyped core gameplay when deciding whether to proceed with project, allowing us to validate our concept with the team as well as external players.

Prototyping

  • Led brainstorming and prototyping efforts for the team to choose a project we were all excited to work on.
  • Farm Sim Prototype: Used Godot to create a farm sim / wave defense / logic puzzle game. Designed to test the core loop and validate the logic puzzle as an interesting part of that loop.
  • Turn-based Tactics Prototype: Used Unity to create a turn-based aerial tactics game. Designed unique player and enemy aircraft and missions which allowed us to explore gameplay style.

Senior Software Engineer

2015 – 2024

Demiurge Studios|Cambridge, MA

Worked on Demiurge's internal and co-development projects. I focused on gameplay engineering and collaborated closely with designers and artists, gaining experience across many genres and platforms.

Internal IP Dev

  • TENSE: Created and expanded design tools to implement new weapons, enemies, and boss fights to create varied gameplay patterns.
  • Unannounced Extraction Shooter Prototype: Implemented and tuned PvP and PvE combat, including new weapon types, abilities, enemy behaviors, and traps.

Unannounced Hero Shooter

  • Lead gameplay engineer, assisting the design team with features such as cover, capture points, equipable objectives, and character implementation.
  • Designed, proposed, and built new game modes and objectives to create new gameplay patterns.
  • Worked with designers to implement abilities using Unreal's Gameplay Ability System, allowing for client-side prediction and smooth gameplay over the network.

Sega Heroes

  • Lead gameplay engineer, working closely with designers to implement new characters and game modes.
  • Designed and implemented all April Fool's Day special events for the game, which increased player engagement and online discussion of the game.
  • Worked with designers and animators to create a flexible gameplay system that allowed for faster and less error prone character authoring than our previous match-3 titles.
  • Redesigned gameplay evaluation to allow for simultaneous character actions, making the game both play faster and feel more responsive to players.
  • Helped implement tools for in-engine authoring of store bundles, allowing greatly increased flexibility and speed.
  • Bridged the gap between design and engineering teams to find and build efficient ways to realize design goals within the time constraints of a live game.

Crazy Taxi Gazillionaire

  • Worked on the 3D worlds the Taxis inhabited, creating tools for designers to easily make jumps, tricks, and explosions.
  • Implemented the procedural visuals for Taxi movement in the game.
  • Worked with design to implement the core idle-game money generation system in line with the economy spreadsheet.

Marvel Puzzle Quest

  • Built and maintained a document to help designers understand what options were available when building new character abilities. This allowed designers to build characters without needing engineering help, speeding up development cycles.
  • Built new ability tech for characters, as well as large gameplay features such as mission hazards.
  • Built the game's Quest system, allowing designers to easily author new quests and track new data. Daily quests improved retention by giving players attainable goals each day.

Puzzle & Glory

  • Implemented a new store design, which allowed designers to set up offers with featured characters automatically instead of requiring new art for each, decreasing authoring time.
  • Implemented a new world map, which placed game events into world locations to contextualize them.

Co-development Projects

  • 2XKO (Riot Games) – Lobby migration feature.
  • Hearthstone (Blizzard Entertainment) – New monetization features for the Battlegrounds game mode.
  • Unannounced Platform Fighter (Riot Games) – Battle pass feature.
  • Rocket League: Sideswipe (Psyonix) – Ported Rocket League cosmetics to mobile, including fixing a bug in Unreal Engine.

Board Game Projects