VR Extraction Shooter | Meta Quest | Steam | Unreal Engine 4
Ghosts of Tabor is a VR extraction shooter that blends PvPvE survival, tactical combat, and resource management. Inspired by titles like Escape from Tarkov and DayZ, players scavenge, loot, craft, and fight to survive while risking everything they bring into each raid. Every encounter is unpredictable, making strategy, skill, and decision-making critical to survival.
Overview
My Role
As the sole Gameplay Designer on Ghosts of Tabor, I collaborated with engineers, artists, QA, and producers to design, implement, and balance gameplay features across multiple updates. My work spanned missions, AI behaviors, player progression, loot systems, and live game iteration driven by analytics, testing, and player feedback.
Mission System
My first assignment at Combat Waffle Studios was to redesign Ghosts of Tabor's mission system with the direction to "create a mission system like Tarkov's." Beyond that high-level goal, the design approach and implementation were left to me.
I analyzed Escape from Tarkov's mission structure, researched other extraction shooters, including VR titles such as Exfil Zone, studied Ghost of Tabor's existing progression systems, played the game extensively, reviewed community feedback and wikis, and documented strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for improvement.
From my research, I designed a complete mission framework centered around two progression paths: Tasks, short repeatable objectives that encouraged regular engagement, and Quests, long-form trader storylines that culminated in unique rewards. I created eleven mission types, modular mission modifiers to increase variety and difficulty, reward structures, progression rules, and balancing guidelines. Using Miro, I mapped progression across five traders, defining 3 mission segments per trader to help with pacing and plotting out; rewards, and long-term player progression to support the game's seasonal wipe cycle.
Each progression segment was divided into individual mission blocks. Every mission was documented in detail, including its name, objectives, trader dialogue, reward structure, and reference images indicating the intended placement of mission-related objects within the game world.
Once the initial design was complete, I presented it to the team, gathered feedback, and refined the system to align with project scope, development timelines, and overall design goals. After the design was approved, I collaborated with engineers to bring the system to life. Using the backend tools they developed, I implemented missions into the game, validated functionality, and partnered with the QA team to identify and resolve issues through playtesting.
The reworked mission system shipped alongside several other major features, limiting the amount of testing and iteration possible before release. Following launch, I analyzed gameplay data and player feedback to identify areas for improvement, informing future balancing and refinements to the system.
The result was a scalable and modular mission framework that established clear player progression, encouraged long-term engagement, and provided a strong foundation for future mission content and seasonal updates. Throughout my time at Combat Waffle Studios, I continuously refined the system in response to player feedback, internal playtesting, and new gameplay features that influenced mission design.
Like any live-service feature, the mission system evolved over time, and I viewed each iteration as an opportunity to improve pacing, balance, and the overall player experience. By designing the system with flexibility and extensibility in mind, future mission content could be added and adjusted without requiring a complete redesign.
Bunker Progression
The bunker serves as the player's home base, where they store equipment, manage upgrades, and prepare for raids. I was tasked with designing a comprehensive overhaul of its progression systems with the goal of creating a more immersive, interactive VR experience.
The redesign focused on replacing traditional menu interactions with physical gameplay, allowing players to upgrade facilities by collecting resources and performing hands-on actions such as installing equipment, repairing systems, and maintaining their bunker. At the same time, I identified opportunities to streamline common tasks and introduce quality-of-life improvements that reduced downtime between raids, allowing players to spend more time in gameplay and less time managing inventory.
To support this vision, I produced extensive design documentation detailing the progression of every upgradeable bunker room, the resources and items required for each improvement, acquisition methods (market purchases, quest rewards, or found-in-raid loot), room functionality, and quality-of-life features.
Throughout the design process, I also proposed solutions to technical and usability challenges, such as accommodating large or numerous upgrade objects within the bunker and ensuring physical VR interactions remained intuitive, engaging, and efficient rather than repetitive.
One design challenge was determining how players would use collected upgrade materials without relying on traditional UI menus. To keep the experience fully diegetic, I designed an interactive toolbox for each upgrade station. The toolbox displayed the required parts and quantities while allowing players to simply place collected materials inside, automatically contributing them toward the upgrade. This was reinforced with in-world posters, highlights, and visual cues that clearly communicated objectives and item placement while maintaining immersion.
One example of this design philosophy already implemented in-game is the Generator Room. Players begin with a small generator and can gather resources to repair and activate a larger, more powerful generator. To create an ongoing gameplay loop, key generator components gradually deteriorate over time, requiring players to continue scavenging replacement parts and maintaining the system.
Although the complete overhaul was planned as a long-term initiative and has not been fully implemented, the documentation served as a blueprint for future development, informed design discussions, and influenced the direction of subsequent bunker features.
AI Refactor
Throughout my time on Ghosts of Tabor, the AI underwent several major iterations to improve combat encounters and player experience. Updates included new patrol behaviors, new AI Faction, new Bosses, better, spawn logic, movement reactions to player actions, equipment rebalancing, group behaviors, and the complete redistribution of AI across every map to better support player spawns, high-value loot locations, boss encounters, and overall gameplay flow.
My primary role focused on AI implementation, configuration, and iteration rather than designing the underlying AI systems. However, during the development of several AI features, I collaborated closely with our AI Engineer to help shape gameplay behavior, refine design goals, and onboard new mechanics while balancing work across multiple projects. Using Unreal Engine Blueprints, I configured AI health, damage, weapons, armor, combat parameters, and Behavior Tree values to refine combat, patrol, idle, and detection behaviors. I also partnered with the level design and QA teams to place AI across every map, evaluate encounter balance, and continuously iterate on placement, difficulty, and the overall gameplay experience through playtesting.
The AI refactor established more varied encounters, improved AI performance compared to earlier iterations, improved map pacing, and created a stronger foundation for future AI features, factions, and balance updates.
Other Contributions
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Economy Rework: Rebalanced the in-game economy by refining item pricing, trader inventories, purchase limits, loot value, and the overall progression curve.
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Loot System Rework: Redesigned world loot distribution, loot spawn rates, and loot crate configurations to improve exploration, risk-versus-reward, and map balance.
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Health System Rework: Rebalanced the medical system by tuning existing consumables and collaborating with Engineering to design, implement, and ship two new healing items, adding a new spin to player medical choice and general decision-making.
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Character Skill System (Design): Produced design documentation for a long-term character skill progression system that explored player specialization, progression mechanics, unlock paths, and integration with Ghosts of Tabor's existing gameplay systems.
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Live Service Support: Supported seasonal wipe planning and live-service updates by balancing gameplay systems, validating new content, testing progression changes, and ensuring a smooth player experience across major releases.
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Quality Assurance: Worked alongside a small QA team throughout development, creating test cases, reproducing bugs, performing regression testing, and collaborating with Engineering, Art, and Design to support every major update, content release, patch, and hotfix during my tenure.