Kalina Gesheva

Portfolio

Hello, I'm Kalina!

I'm a Game Design student with a passion for creating engaging and meaningful player experiences. I enjoy exploring how gameplay, visuals, storytelling and sound come together to create games that make players feel something.

I'm particularly interested in game design, UI/UX, character design and storytelling. I enjoy coming up with ideas, experimenting with different concepts and finding creative ways to turn them into playable experiences. I'm also interested in how small design choices can influence the way players interact with and experience a game.

Through my studies and personal projects, I've had the opportunity to explore different areas of game development, work with different tools and collaborate with people from different backgrounds. I enjoy learning new things, experimenting with different styles and constantly improving my skills.

Outside of game design, I enjoy drawing, playing games and watching films and series. These are all things that inspire me creatively and often give me new ideas for my own projects.

I'm always looking for opportunities to learn, challenge myself and grow as a designer. I'm excited to see where my creativity takes me and to contribute to projects that bring interesting ideas to life.

Itch.io - https://chickennuggis.itch.io/ 

ArtStation - https://www.artstation.com/chickennuggiz8 

My work

Here is some of my recent work, showing the different things I've explored and worked on as a game designer. From storytelling and player choices to sound design and visual concepts, each project has allowed me to experiment with new ideas and learn more about creating fun and engaging experiences for players.

League of Legends character design

Created an original League of Legends champion concept, including character design, backstory, lore, abilities and visual ideas. Exploring how the character could fit into the world of Runeterra.

Arcweave story + self recorded voicelines

An original branching narrative project created in Arcweave, focused on player choice and multiple endings. The story is structured to give players meaningful decisions that directly affect the outcome and character dynamics.

Arcweave: https://arcweave.com/app/project/POlq1BNlaz

Self recorded voicelines and environment sounds for the story and edited with Ableton and implemented in Unity with FMOD.

You can listen to them here: https://soundcloud.com/chickennuggis/sets/voicelines?si=36cd08f807b94049b2dbc96f92e4f46e&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing%7C 

Gamification of a fitness app

The original Hevy app is effective for tracking workouts, logging exercises, and monitoring progress, however it mainly relies on the user's self-discipline and motivation to continue going to the gym and consistently logging workouts. Over time this can become repetitive and less engaging, causing many users to stop using the app regularly.

My redesign focuses on introducing gamification systems that encourage long term motivation, workout consistency, user engagement and balanced training habits. The redesign uses gamification theory such as the Octalysis Framework and Self-Determination Theory to create a more rewarding and engaging user experience.

Group projects

CMGT (Cat Media and Gourmet Technologies) is a group project I worked on as part of my studies. It's a cooking game where teachers from CMGT are turned into cats who order different dishes. Players have to connect the correct ingredients to complete recipes and serve the dishes to their customers.

My main contributions were creating the UI art, designing the ingredient list, and coming up with the recipes and their required ingredients.

The Devil's Gambit

This group project was part of Dragon's Den, where we presented our game idea to industry professionals in the hope of getting their support and investment to turn it into a real game.

Our concept was a platformer called Devil's Gambit , where you play as a wizard who gets locked in the basement of a casino. To escape, you have to use magical cards to create different types of platforms and make your way through the casino, level by level, until you reach the rooftop.

The project focused mainly on creating a pitch deck, doing market research, planning the budget and developing a small gameplay prototype.

My main responsibilities were designing the levels for our prototype, coming up with the different platform types and creating the justification document, which included the market research and budget.

Hidden Tales

Hidden Tales was a school group project where we worked with an actual client as part of the Tweeduster project. The goal was to bring old Dutch folklore and legends back to life through games, helping younger generations discover these stories in a more interactive way.

For this project, I worked with two stories: the legend of Tanfana and De Witte Wieven. My responsibilities included creating the terrain and map, UI art, writing dialogue and designing quests.

I wanted players to discover the stories through gameplay instead of being told everything at once. My idea was to let players complete quests related to the folklore, gradually uncovering more of the story as they progressed through the game.