Projects
Video Games
University of California: Santa Cruz
ARTG 172:
ARTG 180:
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Stealing Sanity
This is a solo game project where I created all assets, narrative elements, and programming in the Unity 2D core.
The overall emotional response this piece was meant to invoke was regret. In most games there are clear win conditions and players are encouraged to do different things in order to improve their performance and outcome. This is not the case with Stealing Sanity, where the player must actively decide not to adhere to a given challenge. The objective of this game was to see if players could break an already established goal, to collect Sanity, in order to affect their narrative storyline. It is to get the player to stop collecting Sanity during the platforming level in order to save the mental health of the narrative level’s protagonist.
It is ingrained in our generation that when you are playing a platformer and told to collect items, you collect those items. Everything about this level was designed in order to convince the player they needed to collect Sanity. The most prominent design choice that shows this is the UI bar that fills up as the player collects Sanity. The player must go against their preconceived notion of how platformers work in order to get the game’s “good ending”. On the other hand, narrative levels also break the normal constraints of visual novels. They are presented in a way that makes the player think their choices affect the teen’s mental health, it does not. None of the player’s choices during the narrative levels actually affects the story line.
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Detective Redd Rhum
This is an isometric point-and-click-style mystery game. This game was created based on my original pitch of a murder mystery game set in the 1880s. From there my role was to format our game in Unity. This ranged from uploading assets my team members created to coding all the different systems. Regarding such systems, I had to code a dialogue system that used the Ink add-on, an inventory system for picking up clues, and a movement system with point-and-click behavior. With the skills I had learned with Stealing Sanity, I could implement the gameplay design we originally wanted. Being the lead and only programmer to work in the Unity engine in our group was challenging, but overall it was a great opportunity to learn problem-solving and advance my C# skills.
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Collaborators: Luis Cristobal, Brandon Christensen, Brandon Tanega, Brandon Vindel-Fajardo, Jacob Tennis, Luis Cristobal, Jorge Gonzalez, Ami Prajapati, Alice Sheinin
ARTG 171:
Temple of Allure
My role for this game started out as a concept artist before it became based in development. It was clear that myself and one other were the only ones in our group to have Unity coding experience which meant I would in charge of taking our 3D assets and configuring them into Unity. I set up each scene which served as our different levels as well as much of the code need to run our game. I worked on things from player movement to audio and animation triggers as well as prop placement.
The overall theme of the game is a dystopian society far into the future were magical temples appeared and would grant wishes to those who defeated the monsters within. However, our game's focus is much more a metaphor for the trials of living alone for the first time as can be seen through the gameplay. I mention this because my job was taking this narrative and converting it into gameplay mechanics.
Collaborators: Luis Cristobal, Aaron Vuong, Brandon Christensen, Brandon Tanega, Brandon Vindel-Fajardo, Jacob Tennis, Luis Cristobal, Jorge Gonzalez, Ami Prajapati, Alice Sheinin
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ARTG 170:
Convergence
For this project I worked mostly in writing and puzzle design, but I also contributed the UI art for the menus, pages, and chalkboard drawing in the potion room. In terms of writing I wrote out the main premise behind the game and sprinkled bits of lore into different pages the player can find throughout the game.
For the entire game we were going with psychological horror and expressed that mainly through atmospheric effects. Since this is a past and present comparison I wanted my different puzzle areas to show damage in the present, but be in pristine condition in the past. We were trying to show that something had gone terribly wrong after the past player escaped, but long before the present player arrived. This was meant to slowly help the players realize that the past player is the monster.
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Collaborators: Travis Carlen, Hazelle Malonzo, Yasha Bell, Max Schwab, Amina Ismagilova, Jessica Zogaric, Elliot Crisp, Avery Knowlton, Jacob Penland, Daniel Gonzalez, Jorey Bal
Fighting With Fate
The work that I contributed that is present in the final project are the Tarot cards and the UI elements. Using an example of futuristic lighting and style I redrew the 22 Major Arcana cards in this style. I did outlines for how the gameplay would look with the UI elements I had designed and how different screens would look depending on what the player clicked on.
The style I was going for was almost holographic in nature. I altered between two colors: light blue and an almost white for the line art and flat color. The backgrounds of the cards are all a darker blue to really make the brighter colors glow. The glow was done using a 3% gaussian blur for all the line-art. As for the images on the cards, I used the Rider-Waite deck as a template as we were going for general familiarity. We wanted people to be able to recognize the different cards as Tarot which is also why we went with the Major Arcana given that those are the most recognizable.
Continuing with the futuristic theme the UI elements are done in a similar fashion, although they do not have the glow effect as I wasn’t sure how it would look in Godot after being scaled around. The only main difference is that the boxes telling the player what the card effect is are different colors depending on the card’s position in the past, present, future spread. This was done so that the player could easily differentiate between the effects after they returned to the main screen.
Collaborators: Brandon Tanega, Ami Prajapati, Travis Carlen, Brandon Christensen, Yasha Bell
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Star Piece Anthology
Each member of our group made their own individual game based around Star Piece by Mieko Shiomi. I wrote all the code for my game as well as drew up temp assets and then later the finished ones using Phaser 3.
With the inspiration of “The sixth biggest star/ When you find it, look at your watch” I wanted my game to be connected to time in one way or another. In making it a timed game I want the player to feel rushed as they try to find all the constellations which is why with each level the player has less time. It was a way to express how everything we do has a time limit, even something as simple as looking at constellations.
Anthology Collaborators: Travis Carlen, Hazelle Malonzo, Yasha Bell, Max Schwab, Amina Ismagilova, Jessica Zogaric
CMPM 120:
Dragon Patrol
Dragon Patrol was a game from my CMPM 120 class at UCSC where we took Rocket Patrol and modified it using Phaser 3. I knew I wanted to use the theme of dragons in some way while sticking to the requirements and this was the outcome. It is a two player alternating game where the player shoots dragons for points. All the art, sound effects, background music, and sprites are my own creation.
Endless Swimmer
Our assignment was to make an endless runner genre game. I chose to base mine off the ocean and created an 'endless swimmer'. After choosing between dark or light mode and two sprites the player then has to avoid obstacles while collecting fish for points. This was again a solo project which meant all assets were my own.
More games to be added as they are created so stay tuned.
BeesBurge
Enter a small bee and honey-themed town, complete quests, and talk to the town folks. Explore different shops and find hidden items.
This project is currently under development.
Get in Touch: Commissions Available
Interested my work or want to collaborate on an upcoming project? Feel free to reach out anytime, I would be more than happy to chat.
Also check out my game projects at the link below: