Rephrased
An isometric linguistic puzzle adventure where rewriting ancient texts reshapes the environment around you.
Role
Design Producer
Team
12-members Design Team · ~45-person Development Team
Status
In production
Production Ownership
Agile Production · Sprint Planning · Team Facilitation
Tools
As the Design Producer for Rephrased, I oversee the day-to-day production operations of our 12-person design team. I translate our game macro and milestone requirements into actionable design tasks, maintain our weekly production plan, facilitate meetings, track progress, recruit and onboard designers, and coordinate dependencies with other departments. I also designed the structure of our ClickUp workspace, creating a centralized production system.
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Sprint #
Planning & Ownership
Individual Design Tasks
Task Details,
Descriptions, & Links
Status, Assignee,
Due & Priority
*Contribution* Turning high-level design goals into clear ownership, priorities, and sprint-ready work.
I work with the Lead Designer to break milestone goals into deliverables for our 12-person design team. Designers generally own complete areas rather than disconnected tasks, giving them responsibility for a full sequence of 4–6 puzzles.
5 Chapters
Areas
Puzzle Sets
Our agile workflow uses short design and implementation cycles so we can iterate quickly instead of locking the entire production plan too early.
*Impact* Designers have clearer ownership and know what they need to deliver, while potential blockers become visible earlier.
Communication & Team Support
*Contribution* Reduce communication friction by becoming the first point of contact for designers and keeping information from getting lost.
Clarity
Designers should know exactly where their tasks belong.
1
2
Navigation
Information should be reachable without digging through conversations or unrelated folders.
Ownership
Every actionable task should have a clear owner.
3
Visibility
The Lead Designer and production team should be able to understand overall progress quickly.
4
Scalability
The structure needed to continue working as more areas, puzzles, and designers entered production.
5
I also created a clearer Design ↔ Engineering communication structure using Discord threads and pods.
I try to absorb as much operational overhead as possible before escalating questions to the Lead Designer, allowing him to focus more of his time on design direction and feedback.
*Impact* Questions are resolved faster, absent members stay informed, and cross-team dependencies are easier to track.
The Two-Week Sprint Structure
I also help maintain a consistent two-week sprint structure for the design team. Rather than designing and implementing everything simultaneously, we alternate between two different focuses:
Week 1: Design
Designers focus on developing the puzzle or feature itself.
Depending on the assignment, this may include:
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Puzzle concepts
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Rune interactions
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Diagrams or flowcharts
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Whiteboxing plans
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Iteration based on Lead Designer feedback
Week 2: Implementation
The following week shifts toward turning those approved ideas into playable content.
Such as:
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Building Blockouts
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Testing in Engine
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Refining Gameflow
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Implement art assets
Adapting When Production Changes
*Contribution* Protecting the team from production disruption so designers can stay focused on making the game
Midway through Alpha, Rephrased transitioned its production pipeline from ClickUp to Accretion. I learned the new structure, helped translate the existing design workflow into the new tool, walked designers through where their work now lived, and maintained continuity for the active sprint.
*Impact* The design team transitioned tools without shifting their attention away from current deliverables.
Design Task Sheet
< Key Takeaways >
A producer turns vision into something people can act on
The most important part of my role has been translating the Lead Designer's larger creative goals and our production macro into concrete assignments. A milestone only becomes useful when each designer understands what they personally need to accomplish.