“My mom told me I shouldn’t make video games, but here we are.”
Timber Game Engine
Current —
Winter
2023
Game Portfolio
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Engine Programmer & Researcher with Austin Yarger at Arbor Interactive.
Timber is an online game engine hosted on AWS, aiming to foster game development for youths. Built on a forked branch of Godot embedded with Lua.
Contributions:
Implemented various gameplay features in C# & Lua.
Implemented Google Protobufs to store data as binaries in AWS Bucket, reducing storage consumption by 50%.
Reduced latency for scene-loading time from 4s to 2s through profiling.
Prototyping efficient ways to store user-created games on a low-budget cloud through metadata and hashes.
Soul of the Forest
Fall 2024 —
Winter 2023
Gameplay Programmer and QA Analyst in WolverineSoft Studio.
Soul of the Forest is a 2D-RPG case study of Undertale, with robust branching decisions, quest, dialogue, and save systems.
Contributions:
Owned the overhaul of the dialogue system, adding tools for writers to tailor encounters without touching any line of code.
Created achievements for Steamworks SDK interacting with all systems.
Lead playtests weekly, patching various bugs to the questing, event bus, dialogue, and overworld systems. Solved merge conflicts.
AGILE development in a studio of 40+ members, with 1440+ commits.
PERSONAL PROJECTS
Endless Deadlines
Dec 2024
Elegy for Silent Hearts
October 2024
Lead Developer and Writer
Endless Deadlines is a 2D horror and story exploration game inspired by Yuppie Psycho.
Designed main gameplay systems (branching dialogue, save, inventory), and led an interdisciplinary team of artists and programmers to bring ideas to life.
Solo Developer, Writer, and Creative Director
A point-and-click, interactive fiction about two girls’ quest to become poets in Wuxia China.
Story written using Ink (from Inkle Studios), and rendered in Unity URP.
Metroid Clone (NES)
September
2024
Gameplay Programmer
In two weeks, recreated Metroid (NES) in Unity, and added a custom level of our own design.
Contributions:
Recreated iconic enemy behavior (Zoomer, Ripper, Reo, and Skree)
Polymorphic scripts for health (iframes), missiles, and knockback.
Custom-level design to explore our anti-gravity mechanic.
Thanksgiving
Game Jam
Nov
2022
Gameplay Programmer for University of Michigan’s Game Jam
Accidentally Became a Cyborg, Now I have to Feed a Carnivorous Plant Girl is a 2D-bullet hell game developed in two days for the game jam submission theme of “Turkey”—2nd Place Finish.
Contributions:
Programmed the teleporter, health, and movement system of the game.
Created the level environment for home and boss fights.
Worked closely and delegated clear objectives to each teammate to decrease merge conflicts in Github.