Hello There!

My name is PJ Rivas and you have stumbled onto my portfolio website!

I am a game designer living in Seattle, Washington.

I design games for a wide variety of audiences.

My Design Tenets

I design for depth, not complexity

I'm a strong believer that depth allows for more meaningful and engaging interaction than complexity ever could. Having one core system that can be flipped, turned, and juxtaposed in a myriad of ways will create approachable, understandable, and deeply satisfying gameplay that can continually be expanded upon.

Approachable games are the best games

You cannot expect anyone to meaningfully interact with a system-- let alone have fun with a system-- if they don't understand it. User experience and readability are the defining core of any successful game, and I work closely with programmers, artists, and other designers to ensure that any project I'm on is as approachable as possible. If playtest feedback is proving a system to be too complicated, I am eager to retool, refactor, and compartmentalize to ensure my system is easy to pick up and hard to put down.

You can find some of my works that apply this philosophy below...

My Work

My responsibilities:

I interned at Wizards of the Coast twice!

My responsibilities included:

Strategy game focused on dice management with roguelite elements.

My responsibilities: