Rafaela Solís

About Rafaela Solís

Hi! I'm Rafaela Solís, a passionate game designer dedicated to creating engaging, immersive, and emotional player-focused gaming experiences. My journey in game development started as a tiny baby. My father started a company during the tech boom, and performed IT services for the city of Austin, Texas. He always had every kind of computer, and quite often we would sit down together in front of a 4-inch-thick laptop to play obscure, cobbled-together kids games that my tiny brain could understand. I've been hooked ever since.

I double major in Game Design and Game Programming at Champlain College (2028), with a minor in Project Management and specific focus in system design, level design, technical design, narrative design, gameplay programming, rapid prototyping, and more. I have experience with Unreal Engine 5, Unity 6, C++, Lua, C#, Python, Java, Blueprints, and web tools like Astro and Next.js. I love the puzzle of making people happy. I've worked across a plethora of genres and projects: Maze-Puzzle, Action-Adventure, Educational, Drawing-Combat, Multiplayer Coop/Competitive, Website Portfolios, Web Tools, and more!

I've shipped three non-academic large-team project demos: Mega Market Mayhem, Scriptorium, and Open Shift, with Scriptorium and Open Shift in active development. Beyond that, dozens of indie and jam games, and a plethora of academic prototypes and web centered projects, like the one you're on right now! Each project has taught me invaluable lessons about teamwork, scope, design, and the importance of the user.

Experience

  1. October 2026 to Present

    Project Manager

    Leahy Center for Digital Forensics & Cybersecurity, Champlain College, Burlington, VT

    • Restructure documentation, workflows, and meetings across the organization’s teams while keeping each team’s familiar setup
    • Audit existing team processes and introduce improvements with minimal disruption to day-to-day work
    • Lead the team in standups each week, reviewing what we've done, what we could do better, and what to do next

  2. October 2024 to Present

    Lead Developer (Lead Designer, Lead Programmer, Product Owner)

    Pentad Games (formerly Vellum Games)

    • Lead design on Open Shift, a co-op cozy-horror comedy storekeeping game entering beta, directing a 5–7 person team (up to 10) and driving community building and teaser launch
    • Designed 50+ gameplay features across Open Shift, Scriptorium (Lead Designer), and Mega Market Mayhem (Designer, Engine Implementer), scoping each from concept to a playtested, implementable state
    • Prototype in Unity 6 (C#) for weekly Agile/Scrum builds; Open Shift playtests found constant scares numbing, so paced them out
    • Designed rune-drawing combat; messy runes misread in playtests, so retrained the CNN (TensorFlow, Keras) on player samples
    • Author GDDs, VDDs, system diagrams, and level design mockups that align art, programming, and audio
    • As product owner, manage the backlog, priorities, and community and teaser launch planning
    • Built the studio's self-hosted AFFiNE suite: kanban tracking, art critique workflows, AI meeting notes, and nightly CI builds
    • Built a GitHub integration with nightly builds so non-programmers can test the latest build without Git

  3. August 2024 to Present

    Producer

    Champlain College Academic Game Projects

    • Produced 5+ multidisciplinary teams of 3–6 on weekly sprints, shipping every project on time across one-month to multi-year runs
    • Facilitate sprint planning, stand-ups, reviews, and retrospectives; balance workload so each member works to their strengths
    • Own roadmaps, bug triage, and QA, turning playtest findings and bug reports into prioritized sprint work
    • On The Owl Keeper (educational game), cut full voice-acted dialogue to meet the deadline and redirected the sound designer to voice key story moments, preserving narrative impact
    • Author production documentation, schedules, and system diagrams that keep art, design, programming, and audio aligned

  4. August 2022 to May 2023

    Food Handler (FOH/BOH)

    Bakery Lorraine, San Antonio, TX

    • Stepped into team lead during peak hours in a high-volume kitchen, coordinating prep and preventing stock shortages
    • Handled customer orders & concerns in the front of house position to make sure processing was efficiently, streamlined, and timely, providing a good customer experience
    • Managed front of house stock from the back of house to make sure food items were properly restocked on time in a needed basis to reduce waste as much as possible

Education

  1. Expected May 2028

    Champlain College

    B.S. Game Design · B.S. Game Programming · Project Management minor

    GPA 3.90 · Dean’s List, all semesters

Awards

Skills

  • Languages

    • C++
    • C#
    • Lua
    • Python
    • GLSL
    • Java
    • JavaScript
    • HTML/CSS
    • PowerShell

  • Engines & tools

    • Unreal Engine 5
    • Unity (6 & 2022 LTS)
    • UEFN
    • Lyra Framework
    • Blueprints

  • Multiplayer & networking

    • Steam Networking
    • Unity Relay
    • Distributed authority
    • Server & client authority
    • Hostless, router-based sessions
    • Local networking
    • RPCs & state sync

  • AI & machine learning

    • Neural networks (CNN)
    • TensorFlow
    • Keras
    • Game AI
    • Pathfinding
    • Local LLMs (llama.cpp, Qwen3)
    • Speech-to-text (whisper.cpp)

  • Graphics

    • OpenGL
    • GLSL shaders
    • Real-time lighting
    • Texturing

  • Modding

    • UE4SS (reverse-engineered)
    • C++ & Lua mods
    • CurseForge publishing
    • Minecraft modpacks

  • Design

    • Systems Design
    • Gameplay Design
    • Level Design
    • Technical Design
    • Narrative Design
    • Combat Design
    • Camera Design
    • Progression & Economy Design
    • Puzzle Design
    • Rapid Prototyping
    • UI/UX
    • GDDs, VDDs & System Diagrams

  • Playtesting

    • Behaviour Interactive external playtests (Dead by Daylight, Blight: Survival)
    • Playtest planning
    • Data analysis
    • Iterating on player findings

  • Production

    • Agile / Scrum
    • Sprint facilitation
    • Kanban
    • Waterfall
    • Product ownership & backlog
    • Scope management
    • Production documentation
    • Jira
    • Confluence
    • Taiga
    • AFFiNE (self-hosted)
    • Trello
    • Notion
    • Miro

  • Backend & infrastructure

    • Node.js
    • Docker & Compose
    • Self-hosting
    • Cloudflare Tunnel
    • S3 object storage (Garage)
    • REST & GraphQL APIs
    • MCP integrations
    • CalDAV & iCal
    • Discord webhooks
    • Email automation
    • Automated API & browser tests (Puppeteer)

  • Version control & automation

    • Git
    • GitHub Actions
    • Subversion
    • Python automation & CI
    • GameCI (Unity CI builds)

  • Art & media

    • Pixel Art
    • 3D Modeling
    • Blender
    • Aseprite
    • Photoshop
    • Illustrator
    • Figma
    • DaVinci Resolve
    • Audacity

  • Web

    • Astro
    • Next.js
    • SEO
    • Three.js
Coursework
  • Introduction to Game Design
  • Creativity and Play
  • Game History
  • Visual Communication for Game Design
  • Principles of Game Design
  • Level Design
  • Applied Ludology
  • Aesthetic Interactions
  • Game Technology I & II
  • Game Studio I
  • Creative Portfolio Tools
  • Games Testing Lab
  • Introduction to Programming
  • Advanced Programming
  • Data Structures & Algorithms
  • Discrete Mathematics
  • Matrices, Vectors & 3D Math
  • Intro to Modern Graphics Programming
  • Game Architecture
  • Game Physics
  • AI for Games
  • Principles of Project Management
  • Catalyzing Positive Organizational Behavior
  • Introduction to the Game Industry