HARRISON BOLIN
Seattle/PST

Howdy! My name is Harrison and I’m a game designer with 4 years of professional industry experience. I’ve worked on titles including Forza Motorsport (2023), Forza Horizon 5, and multiple mobile games. 

With my experience in economy, level, systems, and narrative design I can quickly adapt to your team’s design needs. Making incredible games that delight players is my goal, and I am currently open for work!

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Skills:
  • Level Design
  • System Design
  • Economy Design
  • Narrative Design
  • Unreal Engine
  • Unity Engine
  • Godot
  • Lua
  • C++ / C#
  • Playtesting
  • Prototyping
  • Agile
  • Kanban
  • Pico-8
  • Notion
  • Jira
  • HTML/CSS/JS
  • Adobe Apps
  • Affinity Apps
  • Arduino


05 VR Social Level Design - Cloud Yacht Showcase
Summer 2025


Social

VR / PC
Quest
Mobile

Solo Dev

2022-2025

Cloud Yacht is a 3D VR environment designed for a live space themed event in VRChat in June 2025. For this project I used a variety of pre-made assets, arranging and editing them to fit a unified theme. Added functionality, lighting, and specialized shaders to completely customize the environment and turn it into a special hangout space. 

Tech used: Unity, C# for scripting, Blender, Bakery Lightmapper

Download PDF Version

Design Goals
  • As a social level design, encounters look more like areas where players can interact with each other, chill out, or have a conversation. 
  • Needed to make sure I had areas for large groups, medium groups, and 1:1 player interactions.
  • A dynamic world that would both respond to players and feel enticing to watch without needing to interact.
  • Sightlines are still important for social levels. Players need to find their friends quickly without feeling out in the open.
  • Design areas of the map for players to take social breaks, like balconies or smaller rooms. Much like healing after a firefight, but for social settings :)



(Social) Encounter Area Highlights
Large Player Group Space - Living roomPlanning to accommodate the largest groups in the level, this area is laid out to have easy sightlines to the entrance and corridors allowing players to see their friends passing by. The variety of couches and chairs are laid out with player interactions in mind, with a TV to the side for music or background videos.
Medium Player Group Space - Boat DeckFor the folks who want a chiller atmosphere, the boat deck is designed with several casual sitting areas and several interactable elements including a pool table. This gives players areas of focus that help direct conversation and social interactions. I scripted network-synced animals in the background for players to look at together.
1:1 Player Space - Boat BalconyWith the best view of the skybox, the boat deck was designed for 1:1 or small groups of players to interact. The furniture is placed a bit further apart, with smaller TVs placed so that players having smaller conversations or players taking a social break have an area to rest while staying in the loop.




Development Process:

Step 1: Ideation, sketches, and researchStarted the project with a clear theme for the event that I was building the event around. Centered around stars/dreamy vibes, I knew I wanted to create an environment that felt otherworldly but very comfortable. Maybe some alien creatures?
Step 2: Look development and skyboxTo really sell the “boat on the clouds” effect I knew that I would need to carefully choose, create, then edit my skybox to create an effect that looked pretty from any angle. 

I ended up trying twenty different skyboxes before settling on my final one!

Step 3: Choosing assetsTo achieve the visual cohesion I was looking for, I went through hundreds of assets to carefully select what I know I could make work in my level.

I ended up choosing a lovely boat model, a selection of furniture, plants, decoration, and interactive objects that either fit my theme or I could edit the textures to better integrate them.



Step 4: Interactive Elements and ScriptingI knew I wanted to have elements in the world that could respond to players and immersive them in the world. These included things like interactive mirrors, custom coded AI behaviors, and pickups.

Some fun pre-made assets I included is the fully working coffee bar, physics simulated pool table, interactive bar with working liquid dynamics, and world shaders that matched the music!
Step 5: Mobile ConsiderationsIn order to fulfill the requirements of being available to any VRChat user, I needed to make adjustments to make sure the environment ran well on Mobile/Quest VR. This included altering shaders that were processing heavy and adding mobile-friendly texture fallbacks.
Step 6: Environment animals / NPCsA big center piece of this world was going to be the network synced animals that players could enjoy watching. For these I chose some pre-rigged characters from a monster pack on the Unity store, then edited the textures to be more natural and inviting.

To really emphasize the otherworldly vibe I was going for, I added a shader to the animals that emits light in time with whatever music is playing in the world!




Step 7: Player Expectations In VRChat there are a number of expectations that players have for worlds that they visit. I addressed these by including elements like usable TVs that can load Youtube URLs, adjustable sliders for post-processing effects, toggles for a variety of world settings and player comfort options.

Step 8: Baked Lighting and Post-ProcessingUsing Bakery Lightmapper as a 3rd party tool for more detailed lightmaps in Unity, I went through the process of tuning the world to achieve my desired warm and comfortable lighting.

I then used some subtle post-processing to tie it all together, and made it player-customizable so that they can edit the post-processing to their own comfort!
ResultsBy using the iterative process and utilizing playtest feedback, I was able to achieve my goal of creating an inviting player space with plenty of interactive elements!

As of writing the world has accrued 18,000 downloads and was featured on VRChat’s “New and Noteworthy” tab in-game. Plus my friends just like hanging out in the world, which is the biggest win in my book!





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