Summary

Over my 3-month internship at Insomniac Games, I stood up a full golden-path mission, learning the Insomniac engine and design philosophy.

Overview

Timeline

May 2026 - August 2026
(3 months)

Role

Game Design Intern (mission design focus)

Tools

Insomniac Engine / Luna Editor

Confluence & Jira

Team

11 mission pod members

Total team size 150+

Table of Contents

Work Summary

Project Goals and My Contributions

What I Learned

Project Goals

  • Create a compelling mission providing a familiar fantasy

  • Support main and side missions across the project

  • Stand up content quickly, to a high standard, on a budget

My Contributions

    • Designed a narrative-driven golden path mission establishing new minigames.

    • Created mission beats and pitched them to senior leadership.

    • Set up mission flow in an existing environment, including objectives, tutorials, instancing, and transitions.

    • Implemented narrative lines and cinematics and made pacing and clarity checks.

    • Used environmental storytelling to establish a new location.

    • Used reversals, fantasy of the familiar, and narrative stakes to drive a mission on a budget.

    • Revised side content from external developers, revamping existing mission beats.

    • Made changes to enemy encounters, improving AI navigation and encounter flow.

    • Participated in group ideation and tests for side content and minigame design.

    • Delivered daily progress videos to a pod of 11 developers, actively seeking feedback.

    • Presented progress during weekly pod meetings and worked with all pod members to finish mission content.

    • Worked with internal designers and external developers to understand design intent and support existing missions.

    • Resolved dozens of bugs over 5 other golden-path missions.

    • Provided scripting support to internal and external developers.

    • Maintained 2 golden-path missions as primary point-of-contact and documented existing scripts and gameplay systems.

What I Learned

  • For my main mission throughout the internship, I couldn’t rely on set-pieces or new mechanics, and I was supporting an interstitial between two other sequences. Effective mission flow was key.

    Everything in my mission had to be motivated, run at the player’s pace, and provide variety with limited scope. Using narrative suspense and reversals to contextualize objectives helped a great deal.

    Deviating from standard mission flow at the right moments with non-linear objectives and minigames helped create this sense of variety.

  • I was driven to bring my work to a high standard, and making regular clarity passes helped simplify and improve missions.

    Accounting for different player choices and states made my content feel robust, but natural. Guiding the player without taking away control was essential, and any loss of control had to be narratively justified.

  • The context of a mission can drastically change how a player approaches it, and this affected my work regularly.

    When working on a mission, I always asked myself: what is the intent behind this? What would I think as a player going into this mission blind? Where have I been, and where am I going?