PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:
Uragun – Kool2Play studio
A twin-stick rogue-like mech shooter
Role – QA tester
Helping out the team during development of their twin-stick shooter URAGUN. Since the studio was aware of my Game Design ambitions, they were kind enough to get me involved in providing general gameplay feedback and suggestions in addition to the core QA duties. Which resulted in one of my weapon trait ideas being implemented into the final release of the game.
SOLO PROJECTS:
Head 2 Head
a comedic party game made for the 2022 Game Off
A game jam project made (almost) solo in 10 days. A silly abstract idea hiding a relatively complex combat system underneath.
- Designed a simple but innovative game mode from scratch.
- Rebalanced, added and modified mechanics after forcing unsuspecting people into short playtesting sessions.
- Programmed simple AI behaviour
- Smashed multiple stock assets together and remodelled some of them for a sufficiently coherent overall visual style. (The main character consists of at least 4 different asset packs + some original modelling and texturing)
- Lead an amazing UI artist to provide with all the 2D graphics
T.A.F.A.F.A.
or Training Arena For Asteroid Field Anomalies
The idea was to create a simple “Game Jam”-style VR game (for educational/challenge reasons) that hast to fit under certain fixed made up criteria. In this case:
FPS, VR, Endless, Movement-oriented
The main goal was to create a sense of “flow” in the core shoot-and-jump gameplay.
The game went through multiple drastic reiterations before ending up in the most recent form.
- Designed fresh VR-specific game mechanics
- Game loop redesigned from scratch 3 times while sticking to the fixed 4 criteria mentioned above
- Made numerous VR-specific adjustments for player comfort, clarity and performance
- Turned a 2D UI design into a fully 3D VR interface
- Modelled the guns from scratch.
- Composed and programmed dynamic music for the game
EXPRESSION
A melee fighting system
My first attempt at game development over which I learned the basics of Unreal Engine and 3D software. It quickly became obvious that I won’t be able to keep the scope and implement the majority of design goals on my own so I opted for a small functional prototype instead to showcase what I’ve learned in the process.
- Designed an innovative, complex and surprisingly balanced melee combat system.
- Designed interactive tutorials for all the mechanics
- Programmed AI with 3 different difficulty settings
- Animated some of the moves in Maya.
Some key points of innovation in the fighting genre:
- Fully 3D movement/arenas
- Combat system relying more on strategy, decision making and timing than complicated command input
- Use of IK in animations (altering animations depending on enemy height for example)
- Abstract “simulation” art style and tone
- Resource indicators outside of HUD
UNFINISHED PROJECTS:
PPoSS (unfinished)
or Poisonous Piece of S*** Simulator
A comedic top-down point & click adventure game where we take the role of a toxic office worker and work our way up the company ladder performing all kinds of sociopathic tasks. Started working on it during the Covid lockdown as a way of burnout avoidance, then moved back to finishing projects in the backlog.
VR Ski Jump (unfinished)
The first project of mine to include some actual commercial ambitions. Managed to get some unique and intuitive VR-specific functionalities down, but coding physics from scratch and general advanced programming challenges turned out to be too much to for me to deal with solo.
This is where I seriously started looking for a team to join.
Unnamed Unity Platformer (WIP)
My latest project, trying to keep the scope as small as possible to be able to finally deliver a small full-fledged game. The majority of small studios in the UK seems to be running in Unity so I’ve decided to pick it up as well and learn some actual coding in C#.
Very early stage of development but feels promising and possible to pull off with a team of 3.