Charlie Kinglake - Narrative Designer

Dead Take

Technical Designer:

August 2024 - July 2025

Dead Take is a first person psychological horror puzzle game that incorporate live action footage where the player is uncovering the dark secrets of the Hollywood elite whilst searching for their missing friend.

Released on PC (Steam and Epic)

Responsibilities:

Worked on the project from inception all the way through to release and later patches
Created clear and well documented Blueprints with hooks for other departments (Audio, VFX, Tech Art)
Took features from design concept to final implementation
Worked closely with the code team to ensure features were created in an efficient manner
Assisted with design and iteration of multiple puzzles
Assisted with implementation of full game flow
Iteration based on playtesting feedback
Worked closely with an outsource QA team to identify and fix bugs

Tools:

Unreal Engine 5
Blueprint
Gitlab
JIRA
Confluence

Squadron 42

Narrative Design 2:

Narrative Design 1:

Internship:

September 2020 – Present

April 2020 – September 2020

June 2018 – August 2019

Responsibilities:

Ownership of multiple non-combat, social focused chapters

Taking the chapters through multiple internal milestones

Technical implementation of mission flow

Creating and maintaining documentation for owned chapters and multiple features

Designing and creating background vignettes

Regular progress reviews with directors ensuring work is being completed to a high standard and on time

Working closely with design management, animation and QA to ensure all aspects of owned chapters are to the highest quality

Working closely with teams across multiple international studios

Mentoring new team members

Tools:

Lumberyard

In-house scripting software

Perforce

JIRA

Confluence

One of my ongoing roles at CIG is to identify suitable points within the captured performances for my chapters and determine if and when the player can “pause”, “resume” and “abandon” conversations with NPCs.

Below is a video showing one of the many scenes that I have implemented. This shows the number of different ways that the player can interact with this one scene alone.