Bryan "Corbac" Curchod
UX Researcher
Software Engineer
Game Designer
Origin Story
Gamer at heart
Born in 1996 and raised in Switzerland (Wallis), I started playing my first video game around 4 with Tetris and Pokémon Crystal to find my passion eventually. I grew up with the Nintendo systems and got to play various games on different platforms to finally settle on PC and Switch. Mainly playing competitive or action-filled games, I also enjoy more casual and party games.
I studied Software Engineering at the School of Engineering and Management where I learned mainly Object Oriented Programming, software infrastructure, and database management. Once I graduated in 2019, I had the opportunity to work for two years as a full-stack web developer at ISICS Gmbh. I could work in an agile team with modern web technologies and usual project management tools during my first experience.
Then, in 2021, I moved to Sweden to begin my Master's in Game Development and Game User Experience at the University of Skövde, determined to make my debut in the video game industry. Since my arrival in Sweden, I had the opportunity to work with ScoreSpace on UX research as well as learn how to use Unity and Unreal Engine. Today, I graduated and I am working at Piktiv AB in Skövde as a software engineer consultant while improving my skills in both game development and UX Research.
Personal Projects
Puzzle 2D platformer (Unity - source)
Responsibilities: Game Designer, Gameplay Programmer, Level Designer
Submission for the Global Game Jam 2022 (Feb), developed with a small team of students using Unity. In this 2D platformer, you switch between the Black&White and the colourful world to complete levels.
This was my first real experience with unity to produce a playable game and it allowed me to practice the basics of Unity I acquired.
Top-down Horde (Unity - source)
Personal project to experiment with Unity and prototype for a top-down horde game.
The idea is to have a character using 3 different stances that influence the movement and shooting mechanics. The first strance would be a passive stance that enhances the movement speed and gives the possibility to perform a dash. The second stance allows the player to shoot projectiles from one source (aim with the mouse) while having a moderated movement speed and no dash. Finally the last stance would immobilise the player but adds a secondary source of projectiles (controlled by movement keys).
This project aimed to put into practice the intermediate Unity knowledge I gathered while creating a prototype of an original idea.
Crypt Raider
Project created in the context of my learning of Unreal Engine 5. After some tutorial, I could create this project in a whole day of work, including the level design, and the coding. The project uses the "Medieval Dungeon" asset pack from Infuse Studio. The puzzle is simple: the player can grab a statue and place it on its pedestal in order to open a secret door. They then need to swap statues if they want to take the golden statue.
This project is mainly to show my progression in Unreal Engine 5, and the code I can produce.
User Experience Contribution
Between September 2021 and august 2022, a few students and I were working as User Experience researchers. In collaboration with ScoreSpace, We had the opportunity to test and perform UX research on 5 of their projects (2 presented below). My responsibilities during the collaboration were to lead the team through testing planning and design, data analysis, and report writing.
More recently in November 2023, I had the opportunity to perform independent research by myself for Cuisineer from Battlebrew production. while the research was done in a rather short timeframe, I believe I could produce a strong report that could help the studio. More details in the related blog post
Cuisineer - Battlebrew Production
Simulation - Roguelite
Cuisineer is a roguelite-simulation game where you manage a restaurant and raid dungeon to get ingredient for your dishes.
For this research, I mostly relied on unmoderated playtest and gameplay observation, and focused on the clariy and the experience in the first few hours of the game
Other contributions
In September 2022, I had the opportunity to translate to French the texts and shop entry for the first game from Ikouyo: Gaze Into Fate. This activity made me realise the difficulty of translating a game into another language while conserving the meaning of the narration and dialogues. It was however an interesting challenge that I would be open to try again.
Besides that localisation work, I am always trying new games, participating in alpha/beta/play-test sessions and trying to give constructive feedback to the developers.
Current occupation
I am currently working at Piktiv AB as a software engineer consultant. While this position suits my current needs, I am interested in hearing about opportunities related to game user research or game development in Europe.
Contact
If my profile got your interest, or if you have any questions, I will be pleased to get in touch with you.