Projects

Jynxed Sevenfold – Trading Card Game

Card Game Design   •   Game Balance   •   Rules & Card Design   •   Playtesting
Worldbuilding   •   Art Direction   •   Promotion

Jynxed Sevenfold is an original competitive trading card game built around a central tension: the more damage a player takes, the more powerful their options become. As co-designer, I helped develop the game’s core mechanics, archetype identities, card roles, balance philosophy, worldbuilding, story premise, and player-facing rules language.My work included refining the game’s damage-and-progression system, developing faction playstyles, balancing card effects around tempo and comeback potential, coordinating visual direction for commissioned art, and supporting promotional materials as the game moved toward public release.

D&D 5e Design Work – Subclass Design & Adventure Conversion

RPG Systems Design   •   Subclass Design   •   Adventure Conversion   •   Encounter Design
Rules Writing   •   Balance & Progression   •   Narrative Design

This portfolio section collects two Dungeons & Dragons 5e homebrew design samples: Oath of the Grail, a custom paladin subclass built around purity, resilience, and anti-corruption support, and Assault on the Shadowkeep, a 5e reimagining of a classic 4e adventure.Together, these projects demonstrate my ability to design within an established rules system, create mechanically coherent character progression, adapt encounters across editions, write clear GM-facing material, and preserve narrative tone while updating content for a different style of play.

Wyldeheart – Turn-Based Tactics RPG Prototype

Game Design   •   Turn-Based Combat   •   Unity Prototyping   •   Squad-Based Tactics
Initiative Systems   •   Grid Movement   •   Character Implementation

Wyldeheart is a work-in-progress squad-based tactics game prototype built in Unity. The project is focused on translating tabletop-inspired combat ideas into a digital tactics format, with an emphasis on grid movement, planning-phase decision-making, initiative order, and turn resolution.Current implemented systems include player-side unit selection, movement targeting, action selection, action queueing, initiative ordering, and basic turn-phase progression. The prototype is still early in development, with enemy turns, AI behavior, combat actions, UI polish, and final character presentation planned for future implementation.

Banner Art Credit: Redwall - Orlando and Matthias by sandara

Resume

Skills

Advanced:
      Microsoft Office, GIMP, Creative Writing, Narrative Design, Game Design
Proficient:
      Unreal Engine, Audacity, DaVinci Resolve, Screenwriting, Python, C
Languages:
      English, Russian

Projects

Jynx TCG - Trading Card Game Project
Co-Creator & Designer (May 2023 - Present)
• Collaborated with co-creator to conceptualize, design, and playtest the game and its mechanics.
• Designed and playtested hundreds of unique cards.
• Currently working with co-creator to bring the game to market.Legends of the Ur Tree - Animated Fantasy Series Pitch
Creator & Writer (June 2023)
• Designed the fantasy animation pitch concept.
• Demonstrated proficiency in story structure, worldbuilding, and character design.Maxim - Original Thriller Feature Film Script
Co-Creator & Writer (April 2022)
• Collaborated with co-creator to develop the film script from first concept to final draft.
• Used the standard industry screenwriting format to deliver an engaging thriller story.The Reward of the Faerie King - Fantasy Short Story
Author (November 2022)
• Developed the narrative and characters for a fantasy short story.
• Demonstrated proficiency in creative fantasy writing.Assault on the Shadowkeep - Fan Content Adventure Path
Designer & Writer (April 2022)
• Demonstrated ability to adapt an existing design to a new rule system, keeping the spirit of the    original, while introducing new and exciting elements.
• Designed, wrote, and proofread the adventure document.Oath of the Grail - Fan Content Subclass
Designer (August 2022)
• Created a new subclass option for the D&D 5th Edition paladin class.
• Demonstrated ability to design unique mechanics and content for an existing system.

Education

University of Windsor, Windsor, ON
Master’s Degree in Performance Psychology (September 2019 - December 2021)University of Toronto, Toronto, ON
Honours Bachelor of Science in Psychology and Human Biology (September 2014 - April 2018)

Experience

Hippogryff Games, Toronto, ON
Co-Founder & Game Designer (February 2024 - Present)
• Co-founded a business enterprise focused on creating tabletop game products.
• Developed and playtested engaging tabletop game content, demonstrating skills in game design and    collaborative game development.

About Me

Hello, I’m Erkin and I love stories. In all my work I aim to create stories that resonate with the audience and leave a lasting impact. A great story can be told in any medium, but games, particularly videogames, interest me especially. It takes a great deal of effort and skill to deliver an experience that combines an engaging story and fun gameplay. And best games offer the players an opportunity to develop a sense of ownership and investment in the experience that is rarely matched in more traditional mediums.I strive to master the art of making great games. To that end, I've honed my skills in writing, world-building, and game design. I relish the challenge of bringing worlds to life through the fusion of storytelling and interactive design. If you're seeking a versatile game designer and writer who is passionate about the power of storytelling in games, I'd love to connect and discuss how we can collaborate to bring your vision to life.

Contact

Jynxed Sevenfold

Original Trading Card Game

Jynxed Sevenfold is an original competitive trading card game developed by Hippogryff Games. The game is built around a core design idea: while taking damage naturally brings a player closer to defeat, but it also unlocks stronger options and creates opportunities for dramatic reversals.Rather than treating damage as a purely negative state, Jynxed Sevenfold turns it into a source of escalating power. As players are pushed closer to defeat, their stronger cards and effects become easier to access, creating a constant tension between aggression, survival, tempo, and comeback potential.

Jynxed Sevenfold

Original Trading Card Game

Jynxed Sevenfold is an original competitive trading card game developed by Hippogryff Games. The game is built around a core design idea: while taking damage naturally brings a player closer to defeat, but it also unlocks stronger options and creates opportunities for dramatic reversals.Rather than treating damage as a purely negative state, Jynxed Sevenfold turns it into a source of escalating power. As players are pushed closer to defeat, their stronger cards and effects become easier to access, creating a constant tension between aggression, survival, tempo, and comeback potential.

Project Snapshot

Role: Co-Creator and Co-Designer
Project Type: Competitive Trading Card Game
Genre: Modern Urban Fantasy / Supernatural Card Battler
Primary Design Focus: Core mechanics, card design, archetype identity, game balance, rules clarity, visual direction, and promotional support

My Contributions

  •   Co-designed and refined the game’s core rules and combat structure
  •   Contributed to the damage/progression system that drives the game’s central tension
  •   Designed and refined card effects, faction identities, and archetype playstyles
  •   Worked on game balance through iteration, comparison, and playtesting
  •   Helped develop clear, player-facing rules language for card text and gameplay explanations
  •   Supported art direction by helping define card themes, visual needs, and presentation goals
  •   Contributed to promotional materials and public-facing explanations of the game

Core Design Hook: Damage as Progression

The central gameplay idea behind Jynxed Sevenfold is that the more damage a player takes, the stronger they become.This creates a different emotional rhythm from many competitive card games. Dealing damage is still how a player pressures their opponent toward defeat, but pushing an opponent too far can also give them access to more dangerous plays. This makes every attack decision more interesting: players must consider not only how much damage they can deal, but what resources they may be giving their opponent in return.The result is a game built around brinkmanship and controlled escalation. Players are rewarded for timing their strongest plays carefully, managing risk, and understanding when to press the advantage versus when to hold back.

Design Constraint: No External Trackers

One of our major design goals was to create an immaculate card game: one that does not require outside trackers, counters, apps, dice, or health dials to function.All essential game information is tracked through the cards themselves. This constraint shaped the way we approached damage, resource management, and board state clarity. The goal was to make the game easier to set up, easier to teach, and cleaner to play in physical spaces while still preserving strategic depth.This became an important design and usability principle: every mechanic needed to earn its place without adding unnecessary bookkeeping.

Archetype Design

Jynxed Sevenfold is organized around seven emotional archetypes, each built to express a distinct playstyle and fantasy.Each archetype needed to feel mechanically unique while still fitting into the same core rules structure. My work on archetype design involved thinking about how each faction should win, what kinds of decisions it should ask from the player, and how its mechanics should express its emotional theme.

Wrath

Aggressive pressure, explosive tempo, and high-impact attacks

Gloom

Control, denial, and slowing the game’s momentum

Envy

Copying, stealing, and turning the opponent’s strengths against them

Greed

Value engines, card advantage, and resource accumulation

Devour

Sacrifice, death triggers, and power through consumption

Desire

Control, spell slinging, and cemetery recursion effects

Pride

Solo threats, exalted units, and concentrated power

The goal was to ensure that the mechanics reinforced the emotional identity of each archetype.

Card Iteration

A major part of the project involved refining cards across multiple versions.As the game evolved, individual cards changed in response to balance needs, rules clarity, archetype identity, and playtest feedback. Some cards needed simpler wording. Others needed stronger restrictions, clearer timing, or adjusted costs. In some cases, a card’s role within its archetype changed entirely as the broader system developed.Below, I show examples of cards across multiple versions to demonstrate how the design evolved over time. These examples highlight the practical process behind tabletop systems design: identifying problems, testing assumptions, simplifying rules text, and improving the connection between theme and function.

Card Evolution: Rules ClarityHypnotoad began as a much more complex card that modified the opponent’s Gauge value, temporarily counting it as half for certain gameplay purposes. While the effect was mechanically interesting, it created a clarity problem: the Gauge was already one of Jynxed Sevenfold’s core unique systems, and this version introduced an exception to that system before players could fully internalize how it worked. Later wording improved the explanation, but the card still relied on too many unfamiliar concepts at once, including charged Gauge values and unsealing.Through iteration, we moved Hypnotoad away from abstract resource manipulation and toward a more visible board interaction. The current version temporarily expels another spirit when Hypnotoad enters the battle zone, making the effect easier to understand, easier to resolve, and more immediately satisfying in play. Hypnotoad's evolution became a good learning moment for me: if rules or gameplay clarity keeps feeling out of reach, then perhaps the issue is with the core design itself.

Card Evolution: BalanceBlood Summoning was one of the more difficult Hex cards to balance because its early versions consistently felt too situational to be exciting. The first version could only summon Wrath spirits from the deck after one of your spirits destroyed an opponent’s spirit in combat. Later, we broadened the effect to allow any spirit, but the core problem remained: the card required too many conditions to line up before it became useful, and the summoned spirit’s level depended on what the opponent had in play.Later versions shifted the card toward resurrection instead of deck summoning, which made the effect easier to understand and more generally useful. However, those versions introduced new balance problems. One required the player to offer a spirit they already controlled, which often clashed with Wrath’s aggressive playstyle. Another allowed a spirit to return from the cemetery, but charged cards equal to its critical value, making the cost feel too punishing.The current version keeps the exciting part of the design (bringing a spirit back for a powerful turn) while removing the excessive setup and steep Gauge cost. By having the returned spirit leave at the end of the turn, the card creates a strong aggressive play without becoming permanent board advantage. This made Blood Summoning feel more aligned with Wrath’s identity: explosive, direct, and dangerous, but not without limits.

Card Evolution: Archetype IdentityThe evolution of Gloom’s boss spirit helped us better define what the archetype was actually about. Our first attempt, Brume Knight, was inspired by familiar control-style effects from other card games: it could attack directly, then protect itself by returning to the Gauge. While this fit some of Gloom’s early associations with fog, water, and evasion, it did not fully capture the archetype’s deeper identity. Gloom was not meant to be a simple elemental archetype. We meant it to be rooted in grief, sloth, memory, and emotional stagnation.Our second attempt, Yuki-Onna, moved closer to that identity by slowing down aggressive plays and “freezing” spirits out of immediate combat. This was more thematically appropriate, but the effect still felt familiar rather than distinctive. The final version, Thousand Tears Dragon, gave Gloom a boss spirit that felt unique to Jynxed Sevenfold. Its effect exchanges the cards in your hand with the cards in your free Gauge, turning the game’s damage/progression system into a source of emotional and mechanical identity. Since the Gauge represents both danger and accumulated pain, Thousand Tears Dragon lets the player trade their present options for the power stored in their past wounds. That made the card feel much more Gloom-coded: mournful, reflective, and powered by regret.This iteration helped clarify an important design goal for the archetype: when playing Gloom, the player should feel like they're drawing strength from memory, loss, and emotional weight.

What I Learned

While Jynxed Sevenfold is by no means finished and I expect to learn much more during its ongoing development, working on Jynxed Sevenfold strengthened my understanding of how interconnected tabletop systems are. A change to one card can affect an archetype’s identity, a matchup dynamic, the pacing of a game, or the clarity of the rules.The project also taught me the importance of designing within practical constraints. Because this is a physical card game, mechanics need to be easily readable, trackable, and teachable. Strong design is about ensuring that your ideas come across clearly in gameplay and enhance the players' experience at the table.

D&D 5e Design Work

Subclass Design & Adventure Conversion

This section showcases two Dungeons & Dragons 5e homebrew design projects: Oath of the Grail, a custom paladin subclass, and Assault on the Shadowkeep, an unofficial 5e reimagining of the 4th Edition adventure Keep on the Shadowfell.My goal with these projects was to demonstrate RPG systems design within an existing rules framework. Both pieces required different design skills: the subclass focused on class progression, feature pacing, theme-to-mechanics alignment, and balance against official 5e expectations, while the adventure conversion focused on encounter structure, pacing, narrative adaptation, monster selection, and GM-facing clarity.

Project Snapshot

Project Type: Tabletop RPG Design
System: Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition
Design Focus: Subclass design, adventure conversion, encounter design, rules writing, progression balance, and narrative adaptation

My Contributions

  •   Designed a complete paladin subclass with oath tenets, oath spells, Channel Divinity options, aura progression, support features, and a capstone ability
  •   Built the subclass around a clear playstyle identity: resilient, protective, anti-corruption support
  •   Converted and reimagined a 4th Edition adventure for 5e play
  •   Updated encounters, pacing, creature selection, exploration flow, and GM-facing structure
  •   Wrote read-aloud text, location descriptions, NPC details, encounter setups, tactics, and area features
  •   Balanced character-facing and GM-facing content around clarity, usability, and table readability
  •   Preserved the tone and premise of the original adventure while making structural and narrative adjustments for 5e

Design Focus: Subclass Identity & Progression

Oath of the Grail was designed around the fantasy of a paladin who resists corruption through discipline, virtue, and divine resilience.The subclass mechanics emphasize endurance, protection, cleansing, and moral clarity. Its Channel Divinity options allow the paladin to recover health over time or resist manipulation, while later features extend that resilience to nearby allies. This creates a playstyle centered on staying in the fight, protecting the party from corrupting influences, and acting as a stabilizing presence in dangerous encounters.The subclass progression was structured to gradually expand the paladin’s role from personal resilience to party-wide protection.At lower levels, the oath gives the paladin tools to survive and resist corruption personally. At 7th level, the aura turns that resistance into a nearby party benefit. At 15th level, the subclass expands its self-sustain into a group support feature. By 20th level, the paladin becomes an avatar of purity, gaining broader mental resilience and a radiant battlefield presence.The key design goal was to make the subclass’s mechanics reflect its theme. The key aspect of the Grail Knight archetype from Arthurian legend is moral and physical purity. Therefore, they should mechanically resist poison, charm, psychic pressure, curses, and other forms of corruption.

Design Focus: Adventure Conversion

Assault on the Shadowkeep - Complete Adventure; 64 page document (PDF)

Assault on the Shadowkeep was an exercise in adapting an older adventure structure into a 5e-compatible format.The conversion required rethinking pacing, encounter presentation, narrative clarity, and how information would be delivered to the Dungeon Master at the table. The adventure includes settlement setup, NPCs, rumors, read-aloud text, dungeon areas, encounter difficulty, tactics, maps, area features, and revised story material.A major focus was usability. Each encounter needed to be easy for a DM to understand quickly: what the players see, what creatures are present, how those creatures behave, what environmental features matter, and how the scene connects to the larger adventure.

Design Focus: Narrative Adaptation

The adventure conversion also involved narrative redesign. While the project preserves the core premise of a threatened village and a dangerous ruined keep, it expands and adjusts the surrounding lore, NPC context, and dungeon backstory to create a stronger sense of place and motivation.This included developing the history of the Shadowkeep, clarifying the threat behind the adventure, adding local context through Winterhaven, and giving the dungeon’s major locations stronger narrative purpose.

What I Learned

These D&D projects strengthened my understanding of how tabletop RPG design depends on both mechanics and presentation.A subclass needs a clear fantasy, but that fantasy only works if the mechanics support it at the table. An adventure needs exciting encounters, but those encounters only function if the Dungeon Master can run them smoothly. In both cases, good design means creating content that is flavorful, balanced, readable, and immediately usable during play.

Wyldeheart

Turn-Based Tactics Game Prototype

Wyldeheart is a work-in-progress turn-based tactics game prototype built in Unity. The project began as a way to explore tactical combat, party-based decision-making, and animal-folk fantasy through a videogame format.

Core Design Goal: Variable Combat Initiative

Design Problem
In many turn-based tactics games, initiative is either fixed at the start of combat or divided into predictable player/enemy turns. This makes turn order easy to read, but it can also separate initiative from the player’s moment-to-moment tactical choices.Solution
In Wyldeheart, initiative is determined by the actions units choose during the planning phase. The player assigns actions to multiple units, then those actions are sorted into an initiative queue based on speed.Result
Timing becomes part of the strategy. Fast actions resolve earlier and offer reliability, positioning, or disruption. Slower actions can deliver stronger effects, but carry the risk of resolving after the battlefield has changed.

Combat Flow Mockup

Step 1 - Enemy Cue Phase
The enemy units queue their actions and display a Clue prompt.

Step 2 - Planning Phase
The player selects units and assigns actions. Actions are queued rather than immediately resolved.

Step 3 - Initiative Order Phase
Queued actions are ordered based on initiative logic, creating a visible sequence for action resolution.

Step 4 - Action Resolution Phase
Units execute their queued actions in order, moving across the grid and updating the battlefield state.

This structure is intended to support future tactical depth, including enemy actions, interrupted plans, speed-based abilities, delayed attacks, and class-specific combat roles.The visuals above were created as a low-fidelity mock-up of the intended combat experience. They're meant to demonstrate the turn structure, tactical perspective, and action-selection flow rather than represent final art, UI, or production visuals.

Current Implementation

The current playable systems include player unit selection, movement targeting, valid movement tile highlighting, action queueing, initiative ordering, and basic movement resolution.The prototype does not yet include enemy turns, enemy AI, polished combat abilities, final UI, or finished character visuals. Those are planned next steps. At this stage, the focus has been on proving out the underlying combat flow before investing heavily in presentation.

What I Learned

Wyldeheart taught me that designing a tactical combat system for a videogame is different from designing one for tabletop play. A tabletop initiative rule can rely on players and a GM to interpret edge cases, but a digital version needs every state, input, queue update, and timing rule to be clearly defined.Implementing variable initiative in Unity pushed me to think about design as both a player-facing experience and a technical structure. The system needed to be tactically interesting, but also readable, responsive, and clear enough for players to understand why each action resolves when it does.

Turn-Based Tactics Game Prototype

Wyldeheart is a work-in-progress turn-based tactics game prototype built in Unity. The project began as a way to explore tactical combat, party-based decision-making, and animal-folk fantasy through a videogame format.The current prototype is focused on the foundations of turn structure: selecting units, choosing actions, queueing those actions, resolving initiative order, and moving through the phases of a tactical encounter. While the project is still visually rough, the design goal is to build a flexible combat framework that can eventually support class abilities, enemy behavior, character progression, and encounter design.

Project Snapshot

Project Type: Turn-Based Tactics Game Prototype
Engine: Unity
Current Status: Work in Progress
Design Focus: Turn structure, planning phase, action queueing, grid movement, initiative order, and tactical combat flow

My Contributions

  •   Designed and implemented the player-side turn structure
  •   Built a planning phase where units can select and queue actions before resolution
  •   Implemented grid-based movement and valid-tile selection
  •   Created a basic initiative queue to determine action order
  •   Developed the foundation for unit selection, action selection, and movement execution
  •   Built the project with future support for enemy turns, AI behavior, tactical abilities, and encounter design
  •   Began character implementation work, including rigging a mouse warrior model for future prototype use

Visual Development

Because the project is still early, most visuals are currently placeholder. The portfolio presentation focuses on the systems being tested rather than final art quality.Visual materials for this page include annotated Unity screenshots, turn-structure diagrams, prototype clips, and in-progress character implementation screenshots. These materials are meant to show how the system works and how the project is developing over time.

Legends of the Ur Tree

Legends of the Ur Tree is an animated fantasy adventure series concept created for OIAF's 2023 Pitch THIS! contest. The series is aimed at children and teens.

The story focuses on the adventures of a group of fantastical beings – Aurika, the plant-loving gnome, and three goblin brothers: the big and slothful Tab; the anxious overthinker Ker; and the ambitious Zar. Aurika leads the brothers on a journey across a devastated fantasy world to discover the mystery behind a unique magic flower that was left to her by her grandfather. Travelling by a magic hot air balloon, the friends come face to face with dragons, explore the ruins of ancient castles, and meet other inhabitants of the land.The friends discover that in order for goodwill and chill vibes to survive, and even thrive in the ruins of the devastated world, they must meet each challenge with a hopeful and resilient attitude.Complete Pitch Document - 18 page document (PDF)

Maxim

Maxim is an original horror thriller feature film script written by Erkin Zuluev and Nadya Semenova. The script has been submitted to The TITAN (2022) Screenwriting Contest and 2022 ScreenCraft Feature Competition.The story follows a high school student who's been entangled in a tragic chain of events set off by the manifestation of her boyfriend's hereditary curse, and her unexpected pregnancy.Script Excerpt - 10 page document (PDF)

The Reward of the Faerie King

The Reward of the Faerie King is an original fantasy short story following the adventures of an assassin rat named Flit. In this venture, Flit has to infiltrate a wizard's tower in order to complete a task at the behest of a powerful and capricious Faerie King.The Reward of the Faerie King - 12 page document (PDF)

Assault on the Shadowkeep

Assault on the Shadowkeep is a D&D 5th Edition re-imagining of the classic D&D 4e adventure Keep on the Shadowfell. The original adventure has been converted to be compatible with D&D 5th Edition rules, introduces new story elements, and overhauls many parts of the original dungeon.Assault on the Shadowkeep is unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Fan Content Policy. Not approved/endorsed by Wizards. Portions of the materials used are property of Wizards of the Coast.

Assault on the Shadowkeep - Complete Adventure; 64 page document (PDF)

Oath of the Grail

Oath of the Grail is a D&D 5th Edition fan content paladin subclass designed to embody the ideals of the chivalric hero as described in Arthurian legends of Sir Percival and Sir Galahad.

Oath of the Grail - 2 page document (PDF)