Hello, and welcome to my website!
I’m Andrii Dotsenko, and I’ve been working as a game designer since 2004 (or even since 2003, counting my modding experience). In the recent years, my primary areas of expertise were 3C design, UX/UI design, accessibility, and design of highly complex features and game systems.
I also worked in multiple roles during my career: I was a level designer, writer, was responsible for character classes and abilities design, was doing a lot of tuning/balancing, and even was a community manager of a live MMORPG at some point.
I worked for big publishers (Sony, Ubisoft, Microsoft, Tencent), and contributed to 15+ commercially released games, from small casual/mobile titles to big brands like Far Cry or Watch Dogs, and one of the recent games, Sackboy: A Big Adventure, even received multiple BAFTA awards.
Expertise
I have designed and delivered highly complex game systems and features as a part of big multi-studio AAA development teams across multiple platforms, including PC, major consoles with their TRCs, and mobile. In addition, I have an extensive experience in designing, tuning and balancing character classes, abilities and units across various genres such as FPS, RTS, and MMORPG.
Years of experience in practical application of UX & Accessibility principles in games – 3Cs/Game Feel, UI/UX design, game & accessibility settings. I’ve also done it on various platforms, navigating complicated publisher requirements, and involving telemetry, playtesting, and UR labs.
Design leadership experience: hiring, skill sharing and cross-team collaboration to get game functionality delivered with high quality bar and on time.
Technical Skills
- Adobe Creative Suite – Photoshop for creating of high-fidelity mockups and Adobe XD for prototypes.
- Figma – for wireframes and interactive prototypes.
- Unreal Engine – spent countless hours in the Unreal Engine 4 editor while working on multiple commercial projects, currently focusing on learning Unreal Engine 5.
- Basic Programming Skills – familiar with C++ and C-style script languages like Lua or NWScript, worked with many proprietary engines during my career and can learn new tools quickly.
Communication Skills
- Languages: English – Fluent (IELTS General brand score 8.0), Ukrainian – Native.
- Communication & Collaboration tools – MS Office, Confluence/Sharepoint, JIRA/ADO, Miro, Perforce, etc.
- Design Documentation – familiar with various best practices of big companies like Ubisoft or Sumo Digital, successfully worked with various formats from game pitches and feature overviews to detailed feature specifications, high-fidelity mockups and prototypes.
- Writing experience includes scriptwriting for games and game design articles.
- Toastmasters community member (where I hone my public speaking skills).
Education
University “Ukraine”, Bachelor of Fine Arts, Graphic Design and Advertising (drawing skills/web/CG)
Dniprodzerzhinsk Metallurgical College, Junior Specialist, Electrical Engineer (engineering mindset and a lot of math)
Experience
Senior Game Designer at KRAFTON/Vector North (February 2025 – Present)
Project “Gold Rush” (February 2025 – Present)
Cooperative Action/Adventure in the retro futuristic sci-fi setting. Design deliveries:
- 3C (Character, Camera, Controls) design and prototyping – Fortnite-style 3rd person character traversal and locomotion, fluid and easy to pick up and play.
- Weapons & gadgets design and prototyping – designed and delivered multiple weapon types and traversal gadgets, from the initial paper design to Unreal Engine BP prototypes and then supporting code implementation, tuning and balancing.
- Vehicle handling tuning – tuning and balancing of a unique hovercraft vehicle through multiple iterations until high-quality game feel was achieved.
Senior Game Designer at Sumo Digital (December 2017 – July 2024)
Gears of War: Reloaded (January 20204 – April 2024)
Designed complicated cross-platform multiplayer flow and accessibility features (color blind mode, closed captioning, gamepad customization) for one of the major third-person shooter brands in the industry.
Unannonced Project (April 2023 – December 2023)
Designed and tuned combat abilities of multiple character classes for PVP mode of Destiny-style FPS.
Unannonced Project (October 2020 – March 2023)
Designed and delivered character traversal & controls for an online PVP FPS with a lot of verticality (Apex Legends/Titanfall level of complexity), which received a lot of praise from the publisher (Tencent) and play testers.
Designed and delivered complicated UX architecture for an online PVP FPS, in addition, done most of UI design for the project, designed game settings & accessibility features, and pretty complex character customization.
Sackboy: A Big Adventure (December 2017 – September 2020)
BAFTA-winning platformer for Sony, where I was responsible for the World Map, the biggest single feature of the game, heavily interdependent with other features, and which required a lot of coordination inside 100+ people team to be successfully delivered.
Designed and delivered complicated UX architecture & done most of UI design for the project, with unique artistic intent and very complex multiplayer flow where UI and HUD had to adapt on-the-fly to any number of players that could drop-in/drop-out from the game at any moment.
Designed and delivered game settings & accessibility features, including gamepad customization.
Designed and delivered complicated character customization, taking into account LittleBigPlanet series artistic style, its established UX conventions, and requirements of the multiplayer flow.
Designed the game achievements/trophy set, from brainstorm coordination to the final implementation, making sure that the trophy set follows PSN requirements.
Was responsible for Sony TRCs compliance of the game UI/UX, and also designed multiplayer matchmaking, based on PSN requirements.
Game Designer at Ubisoft Kyiv (May 2014 – December 2017)
Design for PC versions of: Watch Dogs: Legion & Watch Dogs 2, Far Cry: Primal & Far Cry 4
As a part of multi-platform/multi-studio development team, designed mouse & keyboard controls for the character, driving and hacking, designed UI for PC, various PC-specific features, ensured their alignment with the overall game direction and seamless transition between gamepad/mouse & keyboard controls.
Coordinated between the dev team, Quality Control department, Ubisoft UR Labs, and studios in Montreal, Toronto, and Bucharest to ensure that the PC end-user experience is delivered in time and in proper quality. During Watch Dogs 2 development, helped new QC department in Kyiv to define PC testing processes and requirements.
Designed the requirements for PC-specific telemetry and user testing on multiple projects. Spent 9 months supporting post-launch of Watch Dogs 2 PC and helped to retain the players in the game by designing extra accessibility settings and PC-specific features, based on telemetry and player feedback.
Interviewed game design candidates for Ubisoft Kyiv. Conducted dozens of technical interviews, helped to improve the hiring and testing process (even giving a conference talk on the topic).
Shared best design practices for UX & PC platform inside the studio, and represented Ubisoft at the conferences as a speaker.
“Having spent about 15 hours playing Watch Dogs 2 with a mouse and keyboard, it’s easily a superior option to using a gamepad, at least in terms of accuracy and convenience.” (PC Gamer)
“As a whole, FC Primal stands out as one of the very best PC version of a Ubisoft solo game.” (Ubisoft Editorial)
Game Designer at Arkadium (November 2013 – May 2014)
Game design of two games for Microsoft Game Studios (Microsoft Sudoku, Microsoft Jigsaw).
From game concept to delivery, I coordinated between the development team, company’s HQ in New York, and Microsoft stakeholders, providing regular reports on the design progress.
The original version of Microsoft Sudoku was pre-installed on Microsoft Surface 3 tablet, and was one of the top-rated among all Microsoft’s branded games.
Game Designer at Gameloft (June 2013 – October 2013)
Participated in Game Evolution of several projects (Playmobil Pirates, UNO, Despicable Me 2, Fantasy Town), delivering updates for Gameloft mobile games while adhering to tight deadlines of the live projects.
Underwent training at the Gameloft Design Campus training, which focused on mobile/live games and monetization.
Game Designer at N-Game Studios (August 2007 – May 2013)
Primary game designer in the small independent studio for 6 years, working on projects for Nival, Paradox, and Bigfish. I was responsible almost for everything, including system design, UI/UX, writing, level design and even community management, often handling several projects simultaneously.
Released 6 games, often under extreme resource and time constraints and with understaffed development team, and gained extensive experience working on various genres, from small casual games, to RTS and MMORPG.
Game Designer at Absolutist (June 2006 – November 2006)
Game design/level design/testing for 5 casual games.
Game Designer/Writer at Nekki (March 2004 – May 2006, remote work)
Writing/level design for action/adventure slasher based on popular in CIS book.
Game Design Framework 