Department 02 Levels · Systems · Narrative

Game Design.

This is the department the Unreal MCP was practically built for. You describe intent in plain English — "scatter cover through this courtyard so no sightline runs longer than 15 meters" — and Claude executes it in the live editor. Blockouts, balance passes, Blueprint prototypes, and design docs all move at the speed of a sentence.

00 — WHAT CHANGES

Three shifts in your day.

A

You stop waiting for an engineer

Prototype-grade Blueprints, scene tweaks, and data changes no longer queue behind engineering. You direct; Claude builds; engineering hardens what survives playtest.

B

Iteration count explodes

When a layout variation costs one sentence instead of one afternoon, you try eight ideas instead of two. More reps is the whole job — Claude buys you reps.

C

The spreadsheet fights back

Balance data stops being a wall of numbers. Ask what happens to time-to-kill if armor scales differently, and get the curve, the outliers, and the edited table back.

01 — YOUR SKILLS

The playbooks you'll use most.

You don't need to write a line of code to use any of these. Talk to Claude the way you'd brief a very fast level scripter who never mishears you.

Browse all Design skills in the Library →

editor-opsDrive the level editor by sentenceskill + mcp
What it does

The workhorse. Through the Unreal MCP, Claude spawns, moves, and arranges actors, edits properties in bulk, queries the scene ("list every enemy spawn point in this map and its patrol route"), and runs console commands — with our project's folder rules and actor conventions baked in.

Blockouts, set-dressing passes, mass tweaks, spawn-point audits: things that used to be an afternoon of clicking are now a paragraph of intent.

Try it
you › In the courtyard section of HEX_Chapter2, add waist-high cover so no sightline between spawn points runs longer than 15m. Use our blockout meshes and show me a top-down screenshot when done.
you › Every torch in this level: raise 20 units, warm the light color 10%, and bump attenuation radius to 800.
blueprint-reviewPrototype mechanics in Blueprint — legiblyskill + mcp
What it does

Claude reads and builds Blueprint graphs through the MCP, following our conventions so your prototypes are legible to engineering instead of spaghetti. It also knows our BP-vs-C++ boundary — so when your prototype proves out, the handoff to native code is a request, not a rewrite negotiation.

Try it
you › Prototype a grappling hook in Blueprint on the test character: hold to aim, release to fire, reel-in speed as a tunable variable. Keep it clean enough for engineering to read.
you › Explain what BP_DoorPuzzle actually does, step by step, in designer language.
verify-in-editorPlaytest the change before you doskill + mcp
What it does

After any change, Claude launches PIE, exercises the thing it just built, watches the log, and screenshots the result. You start your playtest from "it runs" instead of "does it run?"

Try it
you › After you place the cover, run the map and confirm nothing blocks the player path from spawn to the west gate. Screenshot anything that looks wrong.
balance-dataTune the numbers across data tablesskill
What it does

Our data tables and curve assets, read and edited safely. Claude models the downstream effects of a tuning change before making it — damage curves, economy flow, progression pacing — then applies it across every affected row instead of you hand-editing forty cells.

Try it
you › If we raise enemy armor 15% across tier 3, what happens to time-to-kill for each weapon archetype? Show me the before/after, then apply it if nothing breaks the 8-second ceiling.
asset-lintKeep your maps and content honestskill
What it does

Checks your levels and content against studio rules — naming, folder placement, missing references, actors that will break the cook. Run it before you submit and your changelists stop bouncing.

Try it
you › Lint everything I have checked out before I submit. Fix what's mechanical, list what needs my judgment.
02 — BEYOND THE EDITOR

Docs, narrative, and the thinking work.

01

Design docs that stay current

Talk through a mechanic for ten minutes; get a structured one-pager back. Better: after the mechanic changes in-engine, ask Claude to diff the doc against what's actually built and update it. Docs stop lying.

02

Narrative & barks at volume

First-pass ambient dialogue, item descriptions, and lore variants in the game's established voice — generated in batches, curated by you. You stay the author; Claude is the writers' room that never runs dry.

03

Reference & research

"How do the best roguelites handle meta-progression pacing? Give me the patterns, the outliers, and what would fit HEX." A structured competitive teardown in minutes, not a weekend of YouTube.

04

Playtest synthesis

Dump raw playtest notes, survey exports, and session recordings' transcripts on Claude; get back themes, severity, and the three changes most likely to move the fun. Signal from noise, same day.

Feed the system

Your conventions belong in the skills.

If you find yourself correcting Claude twice about the same thing — metrics, naming, "we never place ammo in boss arenas" — that's not a prompt fix, that's a skill update. Say: "add this rule to editor-ops and open a PR." Every designer's Claude learns it at once. See exactly how →

03 — MCPS & APIS FOR DESIGN

Connect the tools you already work in.

Same idea as the Unreal MCP on the Setup page — a live wire between Claude and a tool you already use, instead of a written playbook. These five matter most for design work. The studio's full, verified list lives on the Connections page.

The five worth having as a designer

Notion

Official

If our GDDs live in Notion, Claude reads and updates them directly — which is what keeps a design doc current instead of six weeks stale.

$ claude plugin install notion@claude-plugins-official

First time only: open each page you want visible → ••• → Add connections → select Claude.

Figma

Official

HUD and menu mockups, UI flow wireframes. Claude reads the file's real structure, not a screenshot of it.

$ claude plugin install figma@claude-plugins-official

Needs Dev Mode enabled on the file.

PostHog

Official

The other half of balance-data. Instead of tuning a data table on instinct, ask where players actually fall off — then tune it and watch the funnel move.

$ claude mcp add --transport http posthog https://mcp.posthog.com/mcp -s user

Only relevant if we're sending telemetry to PostHog — check with production first.

Airtable

Official

Item tables, quest lists, dialogue trees — with real relational structure instead of a flat sheet nobody trusts.

$ claude mcp add --transport http airtable https://mcp.airtable.com/mcp

Then /mcp → sign in, or use a Personal Access Token.

ElevenLabs

Official

Hear a bark or an item description read aloud before there's a VO budget. Cheap way to find out a line doesn't land.

$ claude mcp add elevenlabs --env ELEVENLABS_API_KEY=YOUR_KEY -- uvx elevenlabs-mcp

Key at elevenlabs.io/app/settings/api-keys. Personal key — always add with -s user.

The rest of the library

Nine more, including Miro, Blender, Linear, and research.

Whiteboards, 3D blockout, trackers, and web research all have verified connectors too — plus the ones that need IT to provision them, and the four we deliberately recommend against. It's all on one page, filterable by department, with a trust level on every card. Open the Connections library →

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