Ardán, with the support of Screen Ireland, is excited to announce that we will be hosting a talk with Dennis Micka, Senior World Designer at Guerrilla, who worked closely on Horizon Forbidden West. 

The talk will take place on July 7th, 2023, from 4pm to 6pm in the Camus Suite in the Harbour Hotel, Galway. It is free to attend, but places are LIMITED so please book your spot ahead of time on Eventbrite. 

About Dennis Micka 

Dennis Micka is a Dutch Senior Game Designer at Guerrilla in Amsterdam. He has been a game/level designer for about 10 years by now. 

His most recent credits include Horizon Forbidden West, for which he designed the Cauldrons – optional player activities in the game. 

During his study at the HKU (Utrecht School of Arts) in the Netherlands, he landed an internship at Guerrilla during Killzone Shadowfall were he got a taste for AAA game development. 

After graduation he went indie for a couple of years, releasing the indie title called Karmaflow. When that game wasn’t the success the team hoped for, the indie team found themselves building serious games and even physical escape rooms. 

When Horizon Zero Dawn released, Dennis felt the call of the AAA games industry like never before and returned to Guerrilla in 2017 at the tail-end of Horizon The Frozen Wilds to work on Horizon Forbidden West and has been working there ever since! 

During Horizon Forbidden West Dennis was responsible for the development optional Cauldrons and the Salvage Contracts. 

About Dennis’s talk

Dennis Micka, Senior World Designer at Guerrilla, will discuss the creation and iteration process of Horizon Forbidden West’s Cauldrons, from concept to finish. The talk will zoom in on the fan-favorite Cauldron IOTA, which features a huge Tallneck. 

Providing examples detailing the change in the level design during each stage of development, Dennis demonstrates how Cauldron IOTA grabs what made the Cauldrons in Horizon Zero Dawn so engaging and tries to build upon that, lifting IOTA and the other Cauldrons into the next phase of Horizon’s sci-fi dungeon experience. 

Attendees will learn some of the bigger differences between the World Activity Designer and the Quest Designer—two disciplines at Guerrilla that contributed to the creation of the Cauldrons—while talking attendees through the game’s five-year development. 

Register for this talk on Eventbrite: Talk with Dennis Micka (Guerrilla) Tickets, Fri 7 Jul 2023 at 16:00 | Eventbrite