Highlighted Works

(click for development details, design considerations, and more links)

Commercial Projects

Little Nemo and the Nightmare Fiends

Little Nemo and the Nightmare Fiends is a 2D metroidvania platformer based on the Little Nemo IP. My greatest contrinutions to the project were that I:

Created the player character for the real-world sections of the game

The game takes place in two "worlds", the real & dream worlds. In the real world, you play as Nemo but without any abilities. Programmatically, this Nemo is distinct from the Nemo you play as for the rest of the game. This Nemo is a simplified version of the regular, with no references to weapon attacks or unlockable abilities such as gliding. Affectionately called "Nonviolent Nemo", my task was to replace all instances of normal Nemo with his nonviolent counterpart.

Corrected enemy despawning behavior

This was one of my first tasks.

Created teleporters for bonus rooms
Designed bonus room UI
Playtested of 3 game builds

These builds were intended for the team's Kickstarter backers. My job was to play through these builds and note down any bugs that I found & rank them based on severity.

Roles:

Programming

Skills:

C#
Version Control

Tools:

Unity
Bitbucket
Rider

Miscellaneous Details

How I Got the Position

Prior to this co-op, I completed 2 others, one with DVNC Tech & another with enAble Games.

Unity Bitbucket
Metroidvania

My contributions as
Generalist Programmer:

Collaboration with the senior
programmer to complete
tasks such as

Major bug fixes
An alternative player
character
Game feel & polish
UX

Playtests of 3 game builds

Kin Tandem

Code Play

Kin Tandem is an 18-person team project developed in 9 monthsfor Drexel's senior game design class. The game is a two-player, cooperative puzzle game, where each player must use their unique strengths to progress through levels. For the project, I:

Developed 4 enemy types, 2 melee and 2 ranged
Created finite state machines for each enemy
Polished various aspects of the game during the final months

Roles:

Programming
Design

Skills:

C#
Game Design
Version Control (Perforce)

Tools:

Unity
Rider

Unity Perforce
Cooperative puzzle adventure

My contributions as
Enemy Programmer:

4 enemy types

2 melee units
2 ranged units

Enemy AI with state machines
3D model & animation
integration
A shared enemy brain managing
movement and attacking

Team Projects

Lunch Break

Code

Lunch Break is an 18-person team project developed in 6 months for Drexel's junior game design class. For the project, I:

Developed a fast-paced first-person shooter with 6 other programmers
Ensured consistency & maintainability in a 40+ script code base
Created 10+ reusable components to keep the codebase D.R.Y. (Don't Repeat Yourself)
Programmed the player controller with ease of edits in mind

Roles:

Programming
Design

Skills:

C#
Game Design
Version Control (Perforce)

Tools:

Unity

Unity Perforce
First-person shooter

My contributions as
Programming Lead:

Player controller with
state machine
Weapon interface
Codebase consistency and
maintainability

Power Forsaker

Code Play

Power Forsaker is a team project developed for GMTK Game Jam 2023. The theme was "Roles Reversed", and we came up with the concept of a player that loses abilities as you progress, rather than gaining new ones.

(scroll down for postmortem)

As a programmer, I:

Created the player controller and abilities, including

jump
double jump
wall jump
ground pound
dash
glide

Developed the Ability Forsaker UI

As a designer, I:

Composed a team of 5 Drexel students
Drafted the "ability loss" concept
Crafted the player's initial moveset
Mapped out the level the game takes place in

Skills:

C#
Game Design
Version Control
Communication
Teamwork

Tools:

Unity
GitHub

Postmortem (Sep '24)

Power Forsaker is the first 2-hour game jam that I and many members of the team have participated in. On top of that, most of the team had obligations to juggle alongside the jam. With all considered, I think we've made something to be proud of.

What Went Right

The biggest strength of Power Forsaker is its ideas. When given the theme "Roles Reversed", we divised the idea of a reverse metroidvania, where you lose abilities rather than gain them. Even abilities like the basic jump were fair game, and this concept of ability loss still has potential for a full puzzle-style game designed around forsaking the right abilities to best conquer certain obstacles.

What Went Wrong

Power Forsaker's biggest weakness is execution, and there's no one more at blame than myself. There are glaring flaws with the game that I could've (and should've) addressed before jam submission.

The character and abilities don't feel as good as he could to control. Ideally, the player should feel empowered, which would make the process of removing abilities much tougher.

From a level design standpoint, I should've made a longer intro for the player to really take advantage of and get used to the abilities present, so that the full weight of forsaking a double jump for instance, would be present.

Moreover, the game is too hard, with precise jumps and other obstacles tough to navigate if you aren't the developer of the video game. To clarify, my disagreement with the difficulty isn't the high difficulty itself, it's where specifically the difficulty arises, and obtuse solutions to obstacles that border on control exploits aren't good sources of difficulties.

What I'd Do Differently

I can't speak for the other members of the team, but for my part, if I could do 3 things differently, I'd,

give greater focus to the feel of the game,
make the game easier to complete, and
dedicate more time to polish.

Unity GitHub
Platformer

My contributions as
Programmer, Level Designer:

Player controller with
6 movement abilities
All UX
All level design
Initial design idea
Made in under 48 hours

Solo Projects

Variant Gunner Deluxe

Code Play

Variant Gunner Deluxe is an updated version of my solo project developed for Drexel's GMAP 231 - Scripting for Game Design. We were given free reign over the design of the project, so I decided to make a short shoot 'em up inspired by Treasure's Radiant Silvergun. The Deluxe update boasts a refactored code base and bug fixes.

(scroll down for postmortem)

As a programmer, I:

Developed the design, graphics, and code in < 3 weeks
Created the player controller
Constructed 4 unique weapons
Scripted a dynamic camera

As a designer, I:

Designed 4 unique weapons that solve different problems
Made a tight character controller tooled for precise bullet dodging

Skills:

C#
Game Design
3D Workflow

Modeling
Texturing
Rigging
Animation

Vector Illustration

Tools:

Unity
Blender
Visual Studio Code

Postmortem (Original, Sep '24)

Even now, Variant Gunner stands as one of my proudest projects, showcasing my skills as a programmer and tastes as an action game designer.

Variant Gunner has 2 main inspirations, the greater of which being Radiant Silvergun, a shoot 'em up that I had beaten prior to development, and Alien Soldier, a run 'n gun with a heavy emphasis on boss fights. With the time allotted, I wished to make a similar, though truncated, experience to Radiant Silvergun, but with a greater boss fight focus. I like the push-and-pull that boss fights provide, as well as the prospect of exploring boss fight design in my own game!