Juan Borges Vega
WrestleQuest
PC · PS5 · Xbox · Nintendo Switch · Netflix Games · Mega Cat Studios · 2019 – 2024
A wrestling RPG shipped across six platforms, developed over five years at Mega Cat Studios. Joined as a junior engineer in 2019 and grew into one of the lead engineers on the project, owning and maintaining over 40 systems spanning gameplay, UI, tooling, AI, and cinematics.
HIGHLIGHTS
Save System Overhaul
The existing save system handled only a single slot and had persistent corruption issues affecting players across sessions. Collaborated with
a senior engineer to untangle the tightly coupled architecture and redesigned it into a flexible multi-slot system supporting N slots. Added auto-save triggers across key story and quest milestones — quest started, completed, objective completed, new town visited, and before
boss encounters. Implemented a Continue flow at the title screen. The system shipped successfully across all platforms with corruption issues eliminated.
Story Progression Testing Tool
Testing story progression required playing through 5 to 20 hours of gameplay per QA cycle, creating a significant bottleneck for both developers and QA. Built a tool that simulates full episode state — including party composition, inventory, level progression, stable swaps, and primitive save data — without requiring any manual playthrough. Coordinated with junior engineers to gather episode data and validate simulations across every story chapter. Reduced story verification cycles to approximately 5 minutes.
Image Recovery Tool
Thousands of missing image references in an older version of the project were threatening a significant production delay. Built a tool that collected asset metadata from the affected project version, cross-referenced it against the latest build, automatically reassigned over 2,000 missing references across Image and SpriteRenderer components, and saved all changes without manual intervention. A critical production blocker resolved in a single tool run.
Interaction System Standardization
Multiple incompatible interactable systems existed across the codebase, creating recurring issues every time design requirements changed. Engineered a single standard interactable system, documented it thoroughly for the team, and progressively migrated legacy implementations across the project. Shared adoption guidelines with other developers to ensure consistent use going forward. Future design changes became significantly cheaper to implement as a result.
Party Stable System
Separated previously shared inventory, currency, managers, and summons into per-stable instances, enabling players to maintain distinct loadouts across different story factions. Designed and implemented cinematic components for stable transitions — a Switch Stable component that changes the active stable, and a Merge Stable component that combines all assets from one stable into another. Coordinated junior engineers for implementation throughout the game.
ADDITIONAL CONTRIBUTIONS
- Refactored inventory, quest, and crafting backend systems, improving extensibility and resolving serialization issues with the save system
- Implemented combat variants including tag team, pin mechanics with animations, package match, and meltdown win conditions.
- Built world map travel systems including ferry dock transitions between continents and a spaceship with warp and interior navigation.
- Created a bridge system supporting overworld units walking both under and over bridges at multiple depth layers, replacing a problematic existing implementation.
- Developed a stealth mechanic with NPC flashlight detection, requiring players to avoid light cones in specific areas.
- Implemented a data validator tool that runs on game load to automatically correct progression blockers, achievement issues, and unlock states.
- Built a generic UI navigation framework supporting vertical, horizontal, grid, and custom layouts — adopted across multiple game contexts.
- Created puzzle mechanics including an escort protection puzzle spanning multiple scenes and an RC vehicle puzzle with proximity-based player tracking.
- Developed a shooting mechanism for projectile-based obstacles that correctly ignores intermediate colliders based on 3D spatial position.
-Implemented footstep VFX spawning on snow and sand surfaces, enabled and disabled dynamically as the character moves across surface types using object pooling.
- Implemented a skip area system for the world map, allowing players to bypass sections they had already completed.
- Corrected conveyor belt velocity application from a position-based to a purely velocity-based solution, fixing FPS-dependent inconsistency.
- Collaborated with console and mobile porting teams, tracking commits, managing branch conflicts with P4merge, and resolving platform-specific issues.
- Conducted code reviews and provided architectural guidance, mentoring junior developers throughout the project.