About Me
I’m a Macao-born Portuguese national with a head full of made-up universes and stories to go along with them.
It’s my belief that videogames are the most powerful medium to tell narratives and share knowledge due to their interactive nature, thus my area of interest in this field is content creation and understanding the best way to relay information to players.
Presenting "company," created during Global Game Jam 2019.
Receiving award for Best University Game - Industry Choice for my 1st year student project "Qarin" during Universidade Lusófona's Over&Out 2017.
Presenting the winning game, "The Third Eye of the Gazelle," at Neuro Game Jam 2018, a game jam to create games based on neuroscience studies.
Explaining the rules of "Influenza," a boardgame about vaccination during Game Dev Student Showcase 2019.
Presenting "Influenza: An Educational Boardgame" during MILT Conference 2019.
Testing a VR scene for a psychology study on exposure therapy.
Work Experience
Game Designer
Fortis Games
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Helsinki, Finland
2022 - Present
Game designer on unannounced projects with the mission of reinventing community-driven games and helping players connect with the people they love.
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Game Designer & Developer
Doppio Games
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Lisbon, Portugal
2019 - 2022
Designer in charge of defining game, screen, Voice User Interface (VUI) and dialog flows for voice-input games on platforms such as Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, as well as UI/UX design and implementation, game design, narrative design, game prototyping, and some gameplay programming and front-end web development.
Experience maintaining design documentation such as GDDs and wikis, wireframes, mockups, and storyboards, using tools such as Google Workspace, Confluence, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe XD.
Experience in coding in TypeScript, JavaScript, HTML, and CSS on Visual Studio Code; and implementation using Skill Flow Builder, Unity, Cocos Creator, and Twine.
Experience in various stages of development, from concept and design, to prototyping and production, to launch and liveops, agile project development frameworks and tools such as JIRA, and Git source control.
Projects: The 3% Challenge, PAC-MAN™ Waka Waka, Voice Quest, The Vortex, Just Say The Word! for Zoom
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Freelance Illustrator
Portugal
2014 - 2018
Painted personal digital art commissions for a variety of clients and in various styles, executing their vision.
Experience using Adobe Photoshop, PaintTool SAI, and Procreate.
Game Artist
Gojira Lda.
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Lisbon, Portugal
2014
Created and implemented art assets for levels.
Experience using Adobe Photoshop, Unity, and SVN source control.
Projects: Munin
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Education
Videogame Development, BA
Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias
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Lisbon, Portugal
2011 - 2019
Learned about various areas involved in game development, such as game design, level design, 2D art, 3D art, Unity development in C#, database architecture and queries using MySQL, AI design, sound design, source control (Git), as well as game production and marketing practices.
My first year project was a puzzle game called Qarin that was awarded Best Student Game — Industry Choice — during the 2017 edition of Universidade Lusófona’s Over&Out Festival, out of all game projects across all degree class years, for which I did concepting, game design, level design, art direction and game art.
My final year project was a solo-developed visual novel called Gilt & Good Graces, for which I did concepting, game design, narrative design, writing, 2D character art, UI design, UI art, User testing, programming and implementation using Yarn Spinner and Unity (C#).
During the 3rd year of the degree I worked as a student-monitor for the Film and Media Arts Department, developing VR and motion capture applications for psychology and biomechanics projects, developing an educational board game about vaccination called Influenza, as well as organizing and managing game jams and gaming convention booths, and classroom inventory management.
(Interrupted studies from 2013 to 2017 to focus on athletic career)
Presentations & Publications
Talking Sh!t - How to train an AI to respond to insults in games
Pocket Gamer Connects
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Helsinki, Finland
2022
Presentation Slides
INFLUENZA: A Board Game Design Experiment on Vaccination
Neves PP, Luz F, Vital E, Oliveira J
2020
doi: 10.1177/1046878120977895
INFLUENZA: An Educational Board Game
MILT Conference
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Lisbon, Portugal
2019
Presentation Slides
Awards, Accolades & Features
Top 3 Designer in the
Portuguese Women in Tech Awards
Top 3 Designer finalist in the 2020 edition of the Portuguese Women in Tech Awards.
Top Global Game Jam
Recommendation by itch.io
company was the top game recommendation by itch.io Recommends Digest out of the hundreds of submitted games during the 2019 edition of Global Game Jam.
Bronze Medal of Merit
Awarded the Bronze Medal of Merit in 2009 by the Caldas da Rainha Municipal Hall for outstanding achievements in sport.
GameJam+ World Finalist
Have a Good One! was the top Portuguese, top 3 European and World finalist in the 2020 edition of GamJam+, having been awarded Best Social Impact in the World stage.
Over&Out Best Student Game
Qarin was awarded Best Student Game — Industry Choice — during the 2017 edition of Universidade Lusófona’s Over&Out Festival.
Neuro Game Jam Winner
The Third Eye of a Gazelle was the winning game of the 2019 edition of Neuro Game Jam, hosted by the Department of Neurosciences of the Champalimaud Foundation.
And That Little Extra
Besides my career in game development and my stint freelancing as a digital illustrator, I was also a professional athlete from 2009 to 2017. I started doing track & field in 2005, and after specializing in sprinting and hurdles, I signed with Sport Lisboa e Benfica in 2009, later switching to Sporting Clube de Portugal in 2016.
I competed internationally for the Portuguese National Team 13 times since 2008, beat 9 national records, and won a bronze medal in the 100m Hurdles during the 2009 edition of the European Youth Olympic Festival.
After years of chronic tendinitis, I retired from sports and resumed my university studies in 2016.
I love playing narrative-focused games like visual novels and especially RPGs — this passion started with BioWare’s Neverwinter Nights and went way on from there — as well as puzzle and escape room-type games, and for a while I was completely obsessed with Cultist Simulator. Things to do with social justice, mental health, sports or science are bound to catch my attention, as well as cute cat videos or sweet delicious doughnuts.