Mario Mergola
Technical Game Designer with an Engineering Degree
Helping studios bridge the gap between Design and Engineering
Its'a me, Mario!
- 8 years of game design experience across quests, systems, progression, technical design, and player-facing gameplay
- Quest/System Designer on large-scale RPG/MMORPG content in Unity
- Shipped titles across puzzle adventure and open-world action-adventure games
- Hands-on experience with Unity, Unreal Engine 5, Godot, Python, Articy, and structured design documentation
- Designed branching quests, mission logic, player choice systems, world-state logic, encounters, and progression content
- Built implementation-ready structures using states, triggers, conditions, player-facing rules, and system logic
- Led and mentored design teams of up to 11 designers
- Engineering degree from Stevens Institute of Technology
- Delivered $50M+ technical design projects before games, with strong constraint and production experience
Game Design Portfolio -- Technical, Systems, Quests, Progression
What My Portfolio ShowsMy strength is being a key liaison between Design and Engineering. I thrive in: implementation, mission logic, quest systems, progression structures, player-facing rules, branching outcomes, documentation, and data structures that hold critical data from which the team can build.I am not only showing finished content in my portfolio. I am showing how I think through gameplay as a system: player actions, state changes, conditions to be checked, potentially bugs and errors, and how the team can implement it smoothly.
Mass Effect 2: Mission Logic Recreation (Portfolio Piece) -- Technical Designer, Narrative Designer, Programmer
Challenge: Complex Branching Mission Logic
Solution: I mapped the mission’s logic in Articy Draft 3, then used Unreal Engine 5 to extend it where Articy fell short. I scripted custom logic to handle branching conditions, randomization, and outcome resolution, keeping the structure readable and easy to reason about.
Result: The result was a playable simulation that clearly showed how player decisions affected outcomes and character survival. It demonstrated my ability to combine narrative design, systems thinking, and technical implementation across tools.
Technical Design Proof: Built the mission around state logic: player choices, squad assignments, conditions, randomized outcomes, survival checks, and final resolution. This shows how I break complex branching content into usable and clear gameplay logic.
Scars of Honor (In Development) -- Quest Designer / Systems Designer / Encounter Designer
Challenge: MMO Quest Scalability
Solution: I treated quests as systems, not one-off content. I built multi-step quests with clear states, branches, and conditions, and supported them with shared quest data that other departments could reference through our shared server setup. I worked closely with narrative, systems, and level design to make sure quests fit naturally with combat, exploration, and world progression.
Result: The quests were flexible, replayable, and easier to extend without rework. Shared data reduced back-and-forth between teams and made iteration faster, helping establish a cleaner, more maintainable quest pipeline for the project.
Technical Design Proof: Created MMORPG quest content around objectives, quest states, triggers, conditions, NPC and object references, branching outcomes, and shared data used for implementation, testing, and cross-discipline collaboration.
Ascend (Shipped) -- Narrative Director, Game Designer, Content Designer
Challenge: Risk of Narrative-Gameplay Misalignment
Solution: I designed story beats, puzzles, and progression together instead of treating narrative as a separate layer. I worked closely with the Creative Director to prototype puzzles that supported the themes of the world, and I kept documentation focused and practical so other teams always knew what was needed and why.
Result: The final game delivered puzzles that supported immersion instead of interrupting it. Clear documentation and early alignment reduced iteration time and helped the team ship on schedule with a consistent narrative and gameplay experience.
Technical Design Proof: Designed puzzle and story content around player guidance, clues, interaction states, progression gates, and scripted logic so the puzzle advanced the story without confusing the player... as well as rewarding the player with a sense of accomplishment.
Pandora: Chains of Chaos (Shipped) -- Narrative Designer, Game Designer, Content Designer
Challenge: Open-World Narrative Pacing
Solution: I designed mission structures that allowed player freedom while protecting narrative pacing. By working closely with Programming and Level Design, I aligned narrative triggers, quest flow, and gameplay systems in Unreal Engine so story beats fired reliably and supported player flow.
Result: The game delivered a clear narrative arc within an open world. Story and gameplay supported each other, helping maintain player engagement and emotional continuity throughout the experience.
Technical Design Proof: Aligned open-world mission pacing with quest triggers, narrative conditions, level flow, and reliable story-state progression so players could explore without breaking the intended main arc.
The Tūn-Gāst of Oakshaw (Not Released) -- Lead Game Designer
Challenge: Scale and Team Growth
Solution: As Lead Game Designer, I focused on setting clear design direction and feedback loops. I ran live design sessions, mentored designers through hands-on reviews, and shared prototypes through GitHub to keep work visible and collaborative. Design decisions focused on long-term engagement rather than short-term, episodic content.
Result: The team delivered cohesive systems while improving collaboration and individual skill growth. Designers gained confidence and ownership, and the project benefited from clearer workflows and more consistent, player-focused design decisions.
Technical Design Proof: Worked in-engine to prepare level structures for other designers, setting up playable spaces, layout logic, object placement, and workflow examples and templates that helped bring high-level direction into a format the team could use to then build within the project’s design standards.
Writing Sample -- Narrative Designer and Game Writer
This cutscene sample would play at the start of a mission in a Mafia/Payday-style open-world crime simulation game. The playable character is Rafael and the player has been briefed about the particulars of the mission, including the presence of glass-break sensors.This scene underwent three iterations based on feedback from professional narrative designers.