When I was growing up, I often played retro games on an old laptop and spent hours getting lost in them. As I grew older, my interest in how the games worked grew too. I would choose to play games with a level editor or some sandbox aspect and see what I could create, often testing the limits of the game’s logic. Eventually while I was in high school, I started teaching myself how to make games. 2D games seemed like a good place to start as I found I could make assets more efficiently and of a higher standard than 3D games. I learned how to draw pixel art using Aseprite and eventually had the beginnings of a game working. Early on I tried a few different game engines but settled on Gamemaker Studio 2 . It was perfect for what I was trying to achieve and is being improved constantly by a committed team of developers. I often started a project, making good progress with it until I reached a point where I realised I could have done something much better, and then with my newfound knowledge, I would start again or just move on to something new. This cycle has repeated several times over the years, and below you will find the result of these iterations.
2021
A take on the psychological horror genre that sees a series of disturbing events unravel in a remote eastern-European village, all from the perspective of a child. Going into this project, I had a few specific things I wanted to achieve. Firstly, I wanted to make the game feel very retro and lo-fi. To help with this, I limited myself to a 1-bit palette (i.e. only black and white) when creating assets for the game. The second thing I aimed to do was develop my knowledge of shaders. The final thing I hoped to do was effectively create tension and atmosphere in the game through sound design. With these goals in mind, I began to build the world for my child protagonist.
2022
A turn-based city builder strategy game prototype, developed with the goal of achieving a simple but addictive game similar to that of some mobile games. The difference would be that unlike a large portion of mobile games, it would have considerably more depth and content. Starting in a randomly generated world, your goal is to harvest resources, build your village, and wipe out the other settlers to claim the land as your own. Development was an exercise in drawing isometric assets and kindling a stable in-game economy. Without the heavily constrained options for controls on a mobile device, the game's mechanics could be fleshed-out much further while keeping micromanagement enjoyable.
2022
Often in games, fishing is included as a kind of minigame or extra mechanic and is rarely the main focus. I wanted to create a fishing RPG similar to Stardew Valley, except focussed on fishing and exploring the oceans rather than farming. You start in a small fishing village with a humble rowing boat as your only means of getting out on the water. As you progress, your boat and gear can be improved, allowing you to travel further into the oceans to catch new species of fish. The world will contain a number of regions, each with their own selection of native fish and several other islands that can be visited. As can be expected of an RPG, there will be a variety of NPCs to interact with, quests to complete, and things to customise.
2021
This project is not a game as such (yet) but more of a sandbox experiment. It was created with the intention of trying to develop a tile-based procedural terrain generator for a side-on platformer type game. It was the first time I had attempted procedural generation, introducing me to cellular automata and the many applications of noise in game development. During development, I had the idea to create a lighting system using drawn variations of each tile type. The tile sprite would switch depending on its distance from a light source, giving the illusion of light. This led to a great deal of learning on topics such as raycasting and optimisation techniques to keep performance up.
2019
My first venture into game development, a story-driven sci-fi platformer. What originally started as a passion project later became the grounds for the final assessment of a game development course I took in my final year of high school. You play as a clone, birthed into a research lab that has been long since abandoned and are given the task of figuring out where you are, who you are and what your purpose is. Developing this game taught me a great deal about foundational game development concepts, from 2D movement and collision to lighting and narrative design. It also introduced me to the process for drawing and animating game assets such as tilesets, characters, backgrounds, and UI elements.