Natalie Nakashima
Combat, Content, and Technical Designer, with emphasis on Enemy and Encounter Design
Last Sentinel
Technical Combat Designer
Contributions: Designed and implemented the base behaviors and mechanics for open world enemy characters. Worked as the ambassador between design and engineering for proprietary enemy behavior scripting system.
Created and maintained an Unreal Widget in Blueprint that allowed any developer on the team to spawn in enemies in any level they needed. The user-friendly interface meant that the tool was heavily used by downstream content teams that had no knowledge of blueprints or spawner objects.
Developed mission combat encounters and interactive open world objects.
Studio: Lightspeed LA / Tencent
Platforms: N/A (Cancelled)
Engine: Unreal Engine 5
New World
Technical Combat Designer
Contributions: Designed and implemented over 20 open world enemies using text-based behavior tree logic.
Designed and implemented 5 dungeon boss encounters, defining the design philosophy of dungeon boss encounters.
Playlist of dungeon boss guides: New World Boss Guides
Designed and programmed Mutator dungeon system. For the initial launch, this was the entire basis of end-game PvE content, allowing remixing of old content into fresh versions.
Article about Mutator Dungeons here: New World Mutation Guide
Studio: Amazon Games
Platforms: PC
Engine: Lumberyard / CRYENGINE
Slay The Spire
Mods
Design and Programming
Contributions: Designed and programmed 2 full characters into the base game. Each character includes 72 bespoke card designs, 5 bespoke relics, and 2 bespoke potions. Implemented all content by decompiling existing STS Java code and writing in new patches to enable new card content and features.
Characters
The Anguished – A self-flagellating class who focuses on status effect manipulation and taking damage. This character requires the player to walk a thin line between spending health as a resource and death. Includes 5 new status effects unique to this character and.
The Whimsy – A cottage-core summoner class who focuses on summoning familiars and brewing potions. This character features a new summon mechanic that allows the player access to new avenues of play beyond a single character. All new features have been designed and programmed to work within the game.
Studio: Independent
Platforms: PC
Engine: STS / Java
Arkham Horror
LCG Fan
Investigators
Design and Templating
Contributions: Gameplay co-designed, rules templated, playtested, and printed 18 Arkham Horror investigator characters. Each character includes 1 investigator card with unique abilities and card pools, 1-5 signature character cards, 1-5 signature weaknesses, and 0-6 new general investigator cards that can be used as a part of any character’s card pool.
Investigators underwent several rounds of playtesting and iteration through officially released content before being released to the public.
See all cards here: Arkham Horror: Lost Dossiers – Print Files
Studio: Independent
Engine: Arkham Horror: The Card Game