ABOUT ME


My name is Erika Sampson and I am a Wellesley College graduate majoring in Media Arts and Sciences, an interdisciplinary major combining computer science and studio art.

I mainly develop video games and VR experiences, where I’ve worked on everything from game design to programming to 2D art assets. I am particularly interested in accessibility and representation within video games.

The first game I ever played was Pokemon Pearl on the Nintendo DS, and I’ve loved video games ever since. My passion for creating video games started with a middle-school coding summer camp and has only grown during college.


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︎︎︎ itch.io




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︎︎︎ Email
︎︎︎ Instagram
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PROJECTS 



ECHOES OF THE PAST

Echoes of the Past was a semester-long project I developed with a partner as an independent study in virtual reality for my Media Arts and Sciences major. In this VR experience, players have the ability to see the past when interacting with certain objects, and they can use this power to figure out the mystery behind why the town has been abandoned. At the end of the year, this project was submitted to the 2023 senior art exhibition at Wellesley College. 

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Virtual Reality

Jan - May 2023






千山萬水: A THOUSAND MILES AND TEN THOUSAND WATERS

A Thousand Miles and Ten Thousand Waters was the final project for my CS 221: Digital Worlds for Gaming course. It is a 3D third-person puzzle game where the player plays as Xiao-mei, one of the many attendants of Xiwangmu (the Queen Mother of the West), who has been tasked with finding the peaches of immortality. In the section of this game that we developed, Xiao-mei has fallen into a cave and must find a way out. This project aimed to practice using Unity and C# for third-person 3D game development and introduce us to developing games for controllers.

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3D Video Game

Apr- May 2023






TAIWANESE CULTURAL ORGANIZATION MERCHANDISE

Part of my job as design chair for Wellesley College’s Taiwanese Cultural Organization (TCO) included coming up with designs for our merchandise, overseeing everything from the design to ordering the final product. 

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Design

Apr - May 2023

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FISH SIMULATOR

Fish Simulator was my first CS 221: Digital Worlds for Gaming course project. It is a 3D first-person game where the player takes the role of a fish, navigating through an aquarium and solving puzzles to collect stars. The project's main objective was to learn fundamental 3D game development skills using Unity and C# and introduce us to 3D environmental/level design.

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3D Video Game

Feb - Mar 2023





DEBT TO A FOREST WITCH

Debt to a Forest Witch is the second and final project I developed for my CS 321: Virtual Reality course. In this game, players owe money to a witch and must make potions for her business to pay off the debt. Since we had used the previous project (Alien on a Train) to experiment and familiarize ourselves with VR development, the focus of this project was to design a fun and cohesive VR experience using the Unity engine and C#.

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Virtual Reality

Nov - Dec 2022




ALIEN ON A TRAIN

Alien on a Train is the first project I developed for my CS 321: Virtual Reality course. In this VR experience, you play as an alien sent to retrieve items from a train in order to further your research on humanity. The main goal of this project was to familiarize ourselves with working in VR with the Oculus headset using the Unity engine and C# scripting. This game won third prize at the computer science department’s 40th anniversary.

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Virtual Reality

Sep - Oct 2022




STUDYING SHAPES

Studying Shapes is a 2D video game that I created as a student project to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Wellesley College's computer science department. The development process revolved around the prompt of "centering the experience of being a student at Wellesley." The game is inspired by trivia games and puts players in the role of a computer science student. The goal is to answer questions during office hours for various classes and help fellow classmates with their problems. Our game won first prize at the event.

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2D Video Game

Oct 2022






TAIWANESE CULTURAL ORGANIZATION EVENT POSTERS

As design chair for Wellesley College’s Taiwanese Cultural Organization (TCO), my job is to create publicity materials for all TCO events. Once I have the event information from the heads of each event, I gather reference materials and ideas, before drawing out the design in Adobe Fresco and then arranging all the drawn elements with text into a complete poster. 

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Design

2022 - 2023

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MURDER? MURDER

Murder? Murder is a 3D video game and was the final project for my game development course while studying abroad in Denmark. The game is set in the 1880s, and players assume the role of a private detective tasked with solving the murder of a prominent grocery store mogul by collecting evidence. At the end of the game, players must choose the suspect they believe committed the crime. Our goal for this project was to create a cohesive gaming experience with all the typical elements of a video game while working in a team of four, which was a larger team than I'm used to working with.

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3D Video Game

Apr - May 2022