Game Designer, Programmer & Academic
Ace Wars
Ace Wars is a turn-based strategy game in the vein of Fire Emblem that aims to explore queerness through its systems and mechanics. The game was made in association with my Master’s research project and as such lent heavily on academic writing on queer game design and queer representation from the likes of Dr Bonnie Ruberg and Dr Adrienne Shaw while aiming to merge the findings with the “playcentric” design philosophy put forward by Tracy Fullerton.
The game went from design to a playable prototype in around 2 months including an iterative paper prototyping stage which refined the game’s core features and the use of a plethora of design methodologies before being put together in Unity with C#. I handled all design and programming for this project myself.
Play The Game
Published Academic Paper
The Chosen One
“The Chosen One” is a JRPG inspired battle system that I created in about a month by myself for a university project in Unity, taking it from the prototyping phase to receiving focus group style feedback which I then used to improve the game. The game was designed to meet the mechanics of “Squad”, “Protect a Target” and “Timed Tasks.” The battle system focuses around playing with and subverting the typical jrpg trope of a “chosen one” who must save the world. In this game The Chosen One is sort of useless in combat but must be kept alive as he is The Chosen One, so its up to his much more competent party members to sacrifice their turn to protect him from the various monsters.
This version of the game features a random encounter box you can walk around in until you are dragged into the battle system against one of four random enemies that all have different strengths and weaknesses and require different strategies to handle.
I handled all design and programming.
Play The Game!
Source Code/Project Files on Github
VR – Deer Attack
Made in Unity making use of the XR plugin. The goal of this project was to create an experience that would allow the player to embody a specific animal, in this case a deer! The Game in particular takes inspiration from the deer of Richmond Park in London and the idea that they get fed up with tourists coming to the park and bothering them all the time.
The game takes careful consideration of things such as VR motion sickness and puts a high priority on design choices that would improve the players sense of presence, something which is pivotal to taking full advantage of VRs unique capabilities for player and user engagement.
I handled all design and programming on this project.
Design Documents
AR – Targets
Made in Unity while taking advantage of the ARKit plugin. This game while simple was designed to take advantage of Alternate Reality in order to create an approachable multiplayer versus game for casual hang out type scenarios. In essence the game would aim to be scalable for a casual drinking game or being playable while out at a park. The game builds on real pub games such as darts while aiming to introduce a more chaotic feeling form of strategy with the ability to remove opponents points and aim at multiple targets.
I handled all design and programming on this project.
Design Documents
Drowning Dystopia
This project was created inside of Unreal Engine 4 as a way of learning how to take full advantage of the wide array of tools available in the engine both to create things and for optimisation. The scene aims to present a small rundown market that finds itself floating above the ocean after the effects of climate change, while skyscrapers looms all around signalling the wealth inequality inherent in Cyberpunk settings.
As well as taking advantage of UE4 blueprints, I also took advantage of tools such as Session Frontend and unreal insights to profile and optimise the scene
On the left you can see an uninterrupted flythrough of the completed PC scene, while the video on the right is me discussing more in depth the choices I made in regards to performance trade-offs and optimisation techniques on both PC and porting it to tablet
Full Report on Optimisation Process
Temporal Shooter
This project was made in 4 weeks by just me and one other person for a university assignment in Unity 3D. The game was made to meet the mechanics of “Time Distortion” and “Pick Your Poison.” This lead to a mash up of the fast-paced arena shooters of the late 90s and modern roguelike elements. Your bullets can be manipulated with various time based effects and after each round you pick something that gives you a buff and debuff.
The game was taken from paper prototyping to receiving playtest feedback via the PXI questionnaire to then a final build that had been improved by the evaluation data, with a heavy focus on creating good ‘game feel.’ In particular I worked on the roguelike systems design and level design and had significant input on the time based abilities as well.
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Project Source Download