Who Is Pat McCabe?
Pat McCabe is a gender-queer designer and artist. She is something of a pinch-hitter, priding herself on her ability to pick up and develop new skills quickly to fill a wide variety of different roles on a team. She is currently based out of South Bend, Indiana.
Tools/Engine Expertise:
Level Design
As a level designer, Pat focuses on creating levels that engage players with intentional and dynamic action and large and captivating set-pieces. One of the most important things to her is accessibility. She wants to design levels that appeal to a wide audience and that anyone can enjoy.
She earned her “Level Design For Games” certification from CG Master Academy in April 2024, and has been working with other independent game developers to help design exciting levels and challenges.
Pat also has experience working in both AR and VR. They designed and taught classes that helped students develop their own Virtual Reality Experiences, and in 2023 worked as an Experience Designer on the Apple Vision Pro’s Encounter Dinosaurs
Cat Guardian Illustrations
Cat Guardian Illustrations is Pat’s illustration logo. It invokes shows like Sailor Moon and other similar magical girl shows. On the side, Pat writes and illustrates a webcomic about a depressed adult former magical girl.
Their style focuses on mixing appealing shapes with vibrant colors while putting characters into dynamic poses that exaggerate the character’s silhouette.
Pat’s style takes inspiration from shows and comics such as Shera and the Princesses of Power, Avatar The Legend of Korra, and My Hero Acadamia
Tabletop Game Design
In January of 2022 Pat published their first fan playbook on itch.io for the TTRPG Thirsty Sword Lesbians. They have since published four additional fan playbooks for the game, and have gotten praise for how the playbooks utilize the game’s mechanics in unique ways by the game’s creator. Their playbook’s have been included in multiple bundles.
They are currently working on designing more games and supplements to publish online, and they particularly love analyzing the relationship between game mechanics and narrative.
Pat runs TTRPG games and clubs for their local community in their spare time. They firmly believe that Tabletop games are for EVERYONE and want to make and run games that encourage creating safe and welcoming spaces for marginalized communities.
