Senior Game Designer. Specializing in character design and gameplay balancing, I bring over a decade of experience in conceptualizing, developing, and refining game mechanics, focusing on Unreal Engine, prototyping, and player-first games. Experienced as a Lead Designer, managing different teams through the project to completion in several games.
I spawned in Almería, a multicultural city in the South of Spain, surrounded by the sea and the desert, and I like to think that living there has shaped my character in some way.
And it was there that I created my first game ever, in the dunes by the beach I invented a role-playing game for me and my cousins to play while on those long 6-year-old vacation summers. Of course, being 6 years old and not having played nearly any RPG it became utterly unplayable, but it was fun for us.
So it kind of became a tradition. My high school years were devoted to playing basketball on a semi-pro level, playing strategy PC titles, reading and creating tabletop games, and experiencing with RPG-maker.
Then I went to college in Granada to study History. There I learned fencing, acted and directed in a theater group for some years, learned some History, and overall developed as a human being. Those were the glorious years of MMOs, and I think I played all the titles available at the time. I also discovered the new wave of eurogames on boardgames and fiddled with some designs I never published. In Granada, I surprisingly won some literary contests in poetry and short stories.
And I went back home, to Almería, where I studied English Philology. There I focused on Comparative Narratives, studying the intertwining between videogames and novels. I also started working as a freelance translator, mainly for mobile games and apps, and as a personal teacher for students. While at the University of Almería, I became a student representative reaching the national level in my last year in charge. I organized several cultural activities at my University and founded a cultural students association. I traveled a lot, gave a lot of speeches, read a lot, and played more mobile games than ever (remember the traveling a lot part?).
So it was the year 2013 when I moved to Madrid and entered the games industry at full throttle. In my first year studying Game Design & Development I published, along with my teammates of Kakti Studio, and as a lead designer, three games: Five Bad Fellas The Boardgame (winner of Best Game at Madrid ForPlay 2013 and ESNE Boardgame 2013), Five Bad Fellas Adventure Game (a classic noire point&click showed in Granada Gaming 2013) and Andean Trail (F2P Mobile game released exclusively on Windows Phone).
It was that year that I entered the development team behind Nubla, Gammera Nest, as a level designer, later becoming a game designer. Nubla is a PlayStation 4 title developed along with Thyssen Museum.
As a branch study of Gammera Nest, we founded Gammera Mobile, which focused on mobile games. There, we developed and published Find the Pot, Revisator, ChessNuts, SpaceMinoes, SpaceMinoes PRO, and Another Winter.
A year later we released the second installment of Nubla, called “M, the city in the center of the world”, and a beta for Summon a geolocalization mobile RPG.
I joined UDIT (then ESNE) as part of the Game Design staff, lecturing third-year graduates on Unreal Engine and Game Design, teaching them how to prototype. I also focused on Projects, helping groups of students create their first project in the industry. I directed and managed the International Relations side, organizing travels and game jams, inviting important actors for talks, etc.
Later I joined Blackmouth where I was part of a small development team creating Domenation (then called project Home), a battle royale, where we added an interesting twist in the form of domes, where players had to take shelter.
The pandemic hit, and I moved to London to join Splash Damage, a pivotal role for me where I learned a lot from the team that made Gears Tactics, and had the chance to work with some of the best people in the industry.
But after some time I had to go back to Spain, so I accepted a role at The Game Kitchen, as an expert in board games and Unreal, it was a perfect fit, creating All On Board, their VR platform for board games.
Eduardo Cueto Sola 