How can you create a game design portfolio that showcases both quality and quantity?

Your game design portfolio needs to highlight your best work. If you’re a recent graduate or a beginner, you can include school projects, personal projects, game jams, mods, or prototypes. For each project, you should provide a brief description, a link to the game or a video demo, and your role and responsibilities. Show that you’ve mastered the fundamentals. Your portfolio should demonstrate your knowledge and skills in game design, such as gameplay, mechanics, level design, user interface, narrative, etc.

When interviewing a Designer, there is nothing more critical to me than examples that help me understand how that individual thinks and implements their designs. So the examples that I want to see are those that provoke the kinds of stories that help me understand the candidate's thinking, how well they know their audience and market competitors, how they provide compelling gameplay options as well as how they achieve their objectives during development (as mitigation choices are often key to knowing how someone complements a team). So if they have prior game releases that can show this kind of thinking, great! If not, I will need examples in mods, prototypes or even paper boardgames that help me know how they think and weigh decisions.

When crafting a game design portfolio, tailor it to your intended audience. Games are a form of entertainment, and successful entertainment requires effective communication. For industry roles, it's important to emphasise how your skills and vision align with the company's culture, while also demonstrating your reliability. Indie developers should focus on the value they bring to the team and compatibility, showcasing their ability to meet professional standards. For artists, the portfolio needs to highlight their unique style and voice, often challenging traditional boundaries and redefining games as not just products, but as forms of art. Each audience requires a distinct strategy, reflecting your specific objectives and personal brand.

Whilst it's important to include your best work, be sure to fully explain your role in the project. Provide links to the games where possible and explain clearly any challenges that you overcame. This will give insights to your methodology, disciplines and problem solving skills. Most of all, if you're a specialist, or looking for a specific role, tailor your portfolio to highlight this only. Whilst being a generalist is beneficial, narrowing down on your passion and skills will make your portfolio standout and position you as an experienced expert in that field.

Whenever selecting projects to showcase your work try to do it in a way where you can demonstrate how issues and challenges are addressed for that specific scenario as well as your thought process during the work. It's beneficial to talk about real world scenarios so people can relate and understand better your approach to dealing with different situations. If you can, also try to pick from a selection that displays a variety of examples.

Mettre en avant ses réalisations sur son site web est essentiel pour trouver un travail en tant que créateur de jeux vidéo. Un site web bien agencé avec des projets mis en avant correctement fera la différence entre deux profils. Privilégiez le format vidéo pour vos jeux vidéo. C'est celui qui saura le mieux retenir l'attention du recruteur / lecteur. Il suffit d'avoir entre 1 et 3 projets vraiment qualitatifs, mis en avant dans de belles vidéos, pour passer dans le haut du panier des profils. Les projets n'ont également pas besoin d'être gros. Au contraire des petits projets où vous aurez mis l'accent sur la qualité auront plus d'impact.

Employers tend to like a website as it shows professionalism and effort. It's pretty much a no brainer to make your portfolio available, especially embedding any video's that showcase your skills. It's an opportunity to express personality and adding any social proof here can go a long way to build trust and authority. I would highly recommend you do this and it's never been easier to create pro looking websites for free with little to no experience.

Websites are one of the most common ways of showcasing your work. The benefits of having a website is that it gives you credibility and instantly adds a touch of professionalism in your portfolio, something that can hugely enhance the quality of the portfolio itself. Moreover, a website is quite flexible in terms of what can be done and allows you to make it just like you want it to be, be it in terms of color theme or design.

You can use web builder tools to help you create a website, it's easier than ever. Websites project a sense of professionalism, and are a great place to host your various projects for the public eye!

Use a website builder, such as Wix.com to create a simple yet elegant showcase of your games. If you can export to HTML5, you can even use Netlify to host the game directly on the website!

Using game engines and other tools can greatly help you prototype ideas quickly however make sure that you don't rush the prototypes if you plan on including them in your portfolio.

Today, whilst a deep understanding of C’X is still essential, using game engines such as Unity or Unreal is highly recommended to demonstrate your proficiency in these industry standard tools. You can embed playable, web based demo’s and concepts that provide a hands on experience for potential employers. This showcases that you can take your ideas and complete the entire publishing process. There’s really no need to waste time creating systems that can be easily replicated in most modern game engines.

Use a game engine which is very simple to design a game what you want to convey to players. Concept and user experience is more important than the difficulty and challenge. For beginners , they don't have team and completed game projects. They can do simple games independently even it consists of 1 to 5 level is enough to convey their ideas and skills to others.

Showcase the games you developed at Game Jam or Hackathons by putting them on a site like itch.io. If possible, make sure that all the games you add can be played on the web. Create a specially designed subpage for each of your games. Thus, it will be enough to direct people who want to play your games to your itch.io link.

Taking part in game jams is a fantastic way to grow as a game designer and communicates your ability to work within restraints and, typically, within a team. It also displays a your passion and commitment along with the dedication to your skills. As mentioned, even though you or your teams entry will be far from a polished product, take the time to publish the web version to itch.io and craft the game page well. Give context on your portfolio including the theme of the jam, your position along with any challenges your faced and overcame. Adding some learnings and describing any failures also displays humility and I’d even go as far as to give some hindsight reflection on how you may have approached things differently.

Game jams are highly recommended for game devs of all level. Participate in as many as possible! The whole purpose of a game jam is to learn and have fun! This can be quite effective if you want to add more games to your portfolio as well, as these small competitions can help you finish games in little time. Participating in game jams is also a great way to enhance your skills while also promoting your small studio

Never sleep on your portfolio! Remove work that is outdated or maybe you are no longer a level designer, but a technical designer so make sure you adapt your portfolio for that role. If you're a freelancer who works on a variety of contracts, you may get away with having a bigger repertoire, but the common denominator is always update your portfolio and put your best work up.

If you want to showcase a few projects across a lot of different media, I suggest a short video. Think of it as a trailer of what you can do, make it beautiful, exciting and reflect what you can do! Make sure you have a call to action, so the user can engage with you. Videos are great as you can put them on social media and keep them as a header of a gallery website page.

Whilst the previous sections focus on work related areas, I'd highly consider adding a personal section that highlights more of your personality. - Do you enjoy hiking or other outdoor activities? - Have you done any charity or non-profit work? Add some photo's and give some context. Remember, assuming you have the skills needed for the role you are applying for, the employer is keen to establish if you're a well rounded individual and a potentially good fit for their organisation. Companies don't hire people, people hire people! Putting your best foot forward here and giving a glimpse of your personality can often set you apart from your competition!