Games

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

Kin Tandem

Kin Tandem is an 18-person team project developed for 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 5 enemy types
Created finite state machines for each enemy

Roles:

Programming
Design

Skills:

C#
Game Design
Version Control (Perforce)

Tools:

Unity
Rider

Unity Perforce
Cooperative puzzle adventure

My contributions:

4 enemy types

2 melee units
2 ranged units

Enemy AI with state machines

Little Nemo and the Nightmare Fiends

Play

Little Nemo and the Nightmare Fiends is a 2D metroidvania platformer based on the Little Nemo IP. For the project, I:

Fixed 2 game progression halting bugs

One of those bugs was a softlock that occurred seemingly randomly

Corrected enemy despawning behavior
Created teleporters for bonus rooms
Designed bonus room UI

Roles:

Programming

Skills:

C#
Version Control

Tools:

Unity
Bitbucket
Rider

Unity Bitbucket
Metroidvania

My contributions:

Major bug fixes, including a
seemingly random softlock
Playtests of 3 game builds

Lunch Break

Code Play

Lunch Break is an 18-person team project developed 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.
Programmed the player controller

Roles:

Programming
Design

Skills:

C#
Game Design
Version Control (Perforce)

Tools:

Unity
Rider

Unity Perforce
First-person shooter

My contributions:

Player controller with
state machine
Weapon interface
Codebase consistency and
maintainability

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!

What Went Right

Variant Gunner gets the fundamentals right. The controls are tight and responsive, and the player has a reduced hurtbox size, both contributing to a fun bullet-dodging experience.

What Went Wrong

Three weeks seems like a lot of time to make a game, but for my experience level at the time, coupled with my obligations for other classes, the time allocated felt like a commodity.

The primary issue with Variant Gunner is the game's lack of polish. Unexpected enemy behavior can occur if the player dies on Level 2, and the boss hurtboxes are still active during death. Shooting the bosses during death leads to a massive score increase.

From a design standpoint, I would've liked to include one more enemy type. I think my original rational was to lend more of my focus towards the boss fights, but it would've made the levels feel more varied.

What I'd Do Differently

The main thing I'd do differently is attempt to polish the game more. I was limited on time, however some features should've been scaled back in order to support the structural integrity of the game.

Mini-Postmortem (Deluxe, Nov '24)

It was nice going back to the project and refactoring the code with newer sensibilities. Variant Gunner was the first project where I used composition in order to facilitate code reuse, and while this made the code base much cleaner, the entities still did a lot of heavy lifting when it came to utilizing those components. Now, with the refactor, the entity code is much more lightweight, acting as the glue for all its components.

There were many small things that I tried to figure out while developing the original but couldn't, such as homing bullets facing towards their targets. Because of this, they always faced up. In the Deluxe version, this was fixed, and many other bugs, such as missing enemy spawns, and boss damage after death have been fixed.

Variant Gunner stands as one of my proudest solo projects, and the Deluxe update is one of my proudest code bases.

Blender GitHub
Shoot 'em up

Highlights:

All code, design, and art
Player and enemy state
machines
4 unique player weapons
A refactor to improve code and
fix bugs

Castle Conquerors

Code Play

Castle Conquerors is a solo project developed for Mini Jam 134 Islands². With the theme of "islands" and the restriction of "on a grid", I create a game where the must collect coins to spend on units to defeat an opponent with the same goal.

(scroll down for postmortem)

As a programmer, I:

Created the player controller
Developed the opponent and unit AI using ovstacle navigation
Programmed the UI

As a designer, I:

Designed a game where coins must be collected and spent to conquere a castle
Melded action with strategy

Skills:

GDScript
Game Design
3D Workflow

Modeling
Texturing
Rigging
Animation

Vector Illustration

Tools:

Godot
Blender
Inkscape

Postmortem (Oct '24)

Castle Conquerors was made for the 134th Mini Jam. I has 72 hours to ideate and execute. The game marks my foray into strategy blended with real-time action. I cannot pretend this was the plan going in; in typical jam fashion, the ideation process was very loose. Even so, I am quite proud of the result, and hope to incorporate more strategic elements in my future action endeavors.