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Spooky Inc was a Unity game I worked on for about 6 months alongside 8 other people. The stand-out feature of the game is the custom controller built by Edward Amatiello using an Arduino, and as part of the project I had to work very closely with them to make the controller communicates with the game correctly. I was also the most proficient programmer in the group, thus I became the lead programmer for the project and programming about 80% of it.

While the game was workshopped by the whole group, I came up with the initial concept for the game and acted as a vison holder for the group. I’m very proud of the design and concept for the game, inspired by the frantic panic of tactical turn-based PvP games with short timers combined with real-time keeping track of NPCs inspired by FNAF, all with a spooky (not horror, Scooby Doo-style) coat of paint.

I also picked up a lot of knowledge on how to work with other disciplines, as I was responsible for implementing much of the stuff made by my teammates, allowing me to pick up soft-knowledge on things like audio, animation and 3D modelling.

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Warpjam Or: A Tiny Wizard’s Trans-Dimensional Quest To Save The Multiverse is a top down bullet hell made in Unity for Android. The game uses NFC chips to load in level data, with the chips being scattered around a venue in the form of posters. The player would tap their phone on the posters to get the data and play the level. The idea is that it would encourage the player to explore the venue and see all there is to see in a unique way.

The inspiration for this game came from 2 places. The first place is obviously the NFC Toys-to-Life bubble that existed from roughly 2011-2017. I personally played these games a lot when I was a kid, being one of the few types of games me and my siblings all played. These games have fall out of popularity largely due to oversaturation and the cost to play them (as most of the time you needed specialised figures and portals). By using Android phones’ already available NFC hardware, there is no need to expensive portals and by using posters there is no need to spend £10+ on an expensive figure to experience the magic of a real-life object effecting the game. The 2nd inspiration comes from when me the rest of Hell Inc had a stall in the Falmouth University Games Expo 2024. Since Corpo Hell is a VR game (the only one made by 2nd year students) we were put in the corner of a room away from the other 2nd year games. This meant we had less traffic than what we would have had if were with the other games. If set up at the expo, this game would encourage the people to explore more in a fun and interactive way and would have helped more people come to the other booths.

Since this is a game made by me, there is no way the game would be just a top-down-shooter. The game has a unique spell crafting feature where the player can use different components collected by beating levels to craft new bullets. For example, by using lost of “move” components, the player could make a long-range attack. Equally, the player could use a mixture of “split” and “explode” components to make a close-range shotgun blast. I wanted to have a reward for the player when they completed a level, but not one that was meaningless but also considered the fact the player could play any level in any order. After doing some research, I liked the approach the Mega Man games came to with its robot masters and unlocking a new gun at the end of each level and so adapted it for this game. The main difference being that the player has more creativity with the modules than with the guns, since I want the player to have a deeper connection with the wizard.

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The WeedWhackers is a couch co-op turn based tactical card game where players play as a duo of robots defeating invasive plant monsters with whatever they can find. I am the only programmer on this project. The game itself was inspired in part by how me and my flatmate/ group member play Pokémon and other turn-based games by passing around a controller. We couldn’t find another couch co-op turn based RPG like how we played so we decided to make it ourselves (alongside the other team members).

The main challenge with this project is the fact that I am the only programmer working on it. This has led me to develop tools for the designer to use to make new cards and enemies. This was my first time creating tools in Unity and was a learning curve however the tools paid dividends and was effective in making it easy for the designer to implement what he had done. Later into the project, I also made tools for one of the 3d artists/animators to be able to implement rumble and audio into the animations, which fixed some criticisms of game feel for the project.

One of the biggest hurdles I overcame over the course of the project was understanding and making use of the new unity input system. I stared work on the project using the old system; however, the multiplayer nature of the game made it essential to use. This led to a refactor period and me learning the new system on the fly. I ended up using a modified/hybrid version of the control system used in both Re-Jigged and Warpjam, with a parent class dealing with the inputs and child versions of the class having the necessary accessories.

Cassette of Cthulhu is a Unity game where the player uses salvaged/gutted radio, my personal cassette player and an Arduino. This was made for a university module where the prompt was to create a custom controller and game along with it. As a broke uni student, I didn’t have much money to make the controller itself. I found the radio for cheap at a charity shop where I removed and repurposed all the components I could (such as the radio’s potentiometer and audio input) and also found my cassette player in my storage. Since I want to keep using my radio intact, I did not make any changes to the radio itself. How the cassette player communicates with the Arduino is takes the cassette’s audio output, an analogue signal, and uses that to tell whether the cassette player is on, off or paused. This form of input is inspired by early PC computers that stored games on cassette and communicates to the PC via audio tones.

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he WeedWhackers is a couch co-op turn based tactical card game where players play as a duo of robots defeating invasive plant monsters with whatever they can find. I am the only programmer on this project. The game itself was inspired in part by how me and my flatmate/ group member play Pokémon and other turn-based games by passing around a controller. We couldn’t find another couch co-op turn based RPG like how we played so we decided to make it ourselves (alongside the other team members).

The main challenge with this project is the fact that I am the only programmer working on it. This has led me to develop tools for the designer to use to make new cards and enemies. This was my first time creating tools in Unity and was a learning curve however the tools paid dividends and was effective in making it easy for the designer to implement what he had done. Later into the project, I also made tools for one of the 3d artists/animators to be able to implement rumble and audio into the animations, which fixed some criticisms of game feel for the project.

One of the biggest hurdles I overcame over the course of the project was understanding and making use of the new unity input system. I stared work on the project using the old system; however, the multiplayer nature of the game made it essential to use. This led to a refactor period and me learning the new system on the fly. I ended up using a modified/hybrid version of the control system used in both Re-Jigged and Warpjam, with a parent class dealing with the inputs and child versions of the class having the necessary accessories.

https://www.twine.net/signin

Corporate Hells was a Unity VR game I worked on for about 12 months alongside 10 other people, 3 of those being other programmers. Prior to starting the project, I had used a VR headset a grand total of once, let alone programmed for it. It was tough understanding and working with it, but I dove into the deep end with the project and manged to learn a lot from it. My job on the project was being the classic the jack-of-all-trades I am most of the time, doing whatever needed to be done.

One of the things I’m most proud of from this project was being the lead animator on the project, just like with VR, throwing myself in at the deep end and learning as I went along. In my last group project Spooky Inc, I had worked alongside an actual animator, implementing their work into the project, so I had a basic knowledge on how Unity’s animation system worked. As a kid, there was also a time I wanted to do stop-motion animation, so I had a very basic knowledge of the 12 principles of animation. The animation isn’t extraordinary, but considering I was figuring it out as I went along, I am very happy with the result.