Yerba Buena
- Job Role: Game Design Director
- Released in 2026
- Made in Unity
- Developed by Mad About Pandas
- Published by Focus Entertainment
Work Breakdown
We started the ideation phase for Yerba Buena once we wrapped up the production of Hitchhiker and Hitchhiker VR. As I was now the Game Design Director of the studio, I worked closely with the Creative Director to bring the concept of the game to life. The concept of Yerba Buena was a very intriguing setup that I’ve never seen being used before: being an NPC stuck in a half-finished video game, slowly coming to terms with their reality. Funny enough, while we were still in pre-production, the movie Free Guy, which was using the same concept, came out.
I am a huge fan of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and its game design principles. I’ve watched every video and article about the design direction I could find, which vastly inspired the game design direction I wanted to go for in Yerba Buena. The idea was to create a very iconic and easy-to-use tool, the Oscillator, to manipulate a dynamic, sandbox-inspired game world.
The Work
- Coming up with the concept of the Oscillator, from early game conception to testing the game feel in the first Unity prototypes
- Establishing the overall game design principles
- Supporting the Creative Director with the narrative design
- Designing and prototyping the cinematic dialogue setup in Unity
What I learned
The idea of creating this very tight, accessible game loop for how to use the Oscillator required me to dig deeper into the systemic game design realm. Reading books like „Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design“ or „Designing Games“ was a huge help throughout my creative process. I learned a lot about systemic design and its strengths, this is the project where I learned how to truly build a dynamic gameplay loop.
As this project was also focusing a lot on the very intriguing narrative, I suggested going for a very RPG-driven cinematic dialogue setup. I researched the camera setups during dialogue sequences in games like The Witcher 3, and with the help of engineers, was able to prototype a similar setup in Unity. This was a really fun thing to work on, and I am glad the concept ended up making it into the final game.
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