Auteur Game Development
Video Game Art Installations & Pop-ups
Narrative Designer | Writer | Game Designer | Artist | Programmer
About:
In addition to studio work and more commercial efforts, I also make personal games as an indie developer.
A series of video games and narrative VR projects designed to both pay homage to classic first-person shooter games and subvert the genre's expectations to discuss social issues.
In order of gifs:
Here Comes The Neighborhood
A satirical game exploring the economic and cultural impacts of gentrification. Players switch back and forth between 2D and 3D layouts/maps to navigate small neighborhoods in search of where they "fit in." Along the way, obstacles arise, requiring players to fire wads of dollars, populating the area with big brand parodies, changing the landscape completely and impacting your journey to "home" and those who were already home… before you showed up.
Because I F*ckn ❤️ U
A game about both surviving a food desert and overcoming the self-harm of binge eating as a coping mechanism for depression. The messaging is conveyed through a battle arena where players must blast through hordes of demonic-mutant fast food from my fictional mega-chain ‘GG’s BORGER.’
Rory & Maddie VR
A VR experience/short interactive narrative about realizing you're not in love, you just do psychedelics together—more so, it's about projection and the characters we create for people before getting to know them fully and complexly. The importance of seeing people as they are, whether with the help of funky fungi or just good ol' mindfulness.
Because I F*ckn ❤️ U and Rory & Maddie VR were made in collaboration with Edgar Castro of Fabraz Company (studio behind Slime-San, Demon Turf on Nintendo Switch).
My Role:
Complete ideation, prototypes, and testing.
Conceive and write the game’s stories, characters & events.
Developing core mechanics, and level design.
Coding in C#, Unity Game Engine.
Create in-game assets/game art.
All animation.
Project management.
Running an exhibition/live maintenance/troubleshooting.
My games were exhibited at:
Babycastles Expo/Popup
One of my favorite installations, Babycastles “Game Environments”: we set up a limited edition Arcade Cabinet for Because I F*ckn ❤️ U, customized by Babycastles’ artists.
We hooked the cabinet up to my beat-up Asus, and I loved every moment of sweatily troubleshooting and bug-fixing on the fly. People had a blast with the game, discussing the themes or just reveling in the DOOM/Adult Swim nostalgia.
Babycastles is a piece of NYC-game-punk-gallery history.
Microsoft NYC Games Expo
Showcased games to Rockstar Games (Grand Theft Auto), Avalanche Studios (Just Cause) and received 1:1 feedback.
Playtech Games & VR Exhibition
2nd video in this gallery is of Project: Endall — see more below!
Watch: Rory & Maddie VR Narrative
Watch some gameplay moments of the VR experience (what people were interacting with in the video to your left), exhibited at Playtech & Microsoft Technology Center.
Sick Tub Bros
About:
Super Tub Bros & Sick Tub Space Shooter are Platforming and Endless Runner games for PC.
A collection of meme-y video game projects paying homage to old-school games, with an emphasis on timing and pattern recognition.
Showcased at Parsons Game Jam & Playtech.
My Role:
Complete ideation, prototypes, and testing.
Developing core mechanics, and level design.
Coding in C#, Unity Game Engine.
Create in-game assets/game art.
Animation.
Project: Endall
Animation I created using the ‘Endall’ sprite for a brief intro cutscene.
About:
Project: Endall is an asynchronous multiplayer party game for Xbox/PC.
One player controls the final boss, ‘The Endall,’ a planet devouring monster with a plethora of attacks. The other three players control the “Heroes”— characters tasked with taking down The Endall, Contra-style! The game is a chaotic bullet-hell in outer space and top-tier cosmic horror satisfaction.
Shown at Playtech and Babycastles’ Cool Down Games & Art Exhibition.
My Role:
Complete ideation.
Developing core mechanics, and level design.
Coding in C#, Unity Game Engine.
Art direction.
Create in-game assets/illustrate the game art — ‘The Endall.’
All animation.
Project management.
Running an exhibition/live maintenance/troubleshooting.
Attendees bringing big geek sleepover energy to our Endall exhibition and having a rad time.
Process:
Once the core idea/mechanics were locked in, it became about the emotional response. ‘The Endall’ player should feel like an all-powerful, unstoppable force — be the boss. “Hero” characters should feel urgency the whole way through and be incentivized to talk to each other and coordinate their attacks. This means balance is key.
The Endall has a series of attacks: Tentacles, projectiles, spawning swarms of zombies — big, busy attacks. Each hero is specially equipped to deal with one of Endall’s attacks. Everyone needs to assume their role without things seeming unfair, and each round should always feel like a close call for both groups at the end. An epic final battle.
The Endall Sprite
My illustrations were inspired by the works of Junji Ito and Kentaro Miura.
I was definitely blasting the '90s Berserk OST while drawing this guy. Documenting him now, I see some DOOM “Cacodemon” in him as well.
I wanted something unsettling and oddly childlike. I wanted the creature art to feel like a living painting — and be immediately eye-catching and memorable to anyone walking a gallery floor. A menacing mascot you have no choice but to confront.
“Basement Nostalgia” Exhibit Setup
The concept was an old school gamer basement — the depictions we grew up seeing in '90s films. We sourced a CRT TV and hooked it up to Project: Endall. We placed magazines, Magic: The Gathering cards, chip packets, and lawn furniture where there should be a couch to really sell the vibe. The aesthetics of the exhibition and the game came together harmoniously, and the beat-up CRT was the perfect display to enhance our intentionally janky graphics.
We exhibited the game on a modern TV previously, and it was cool, sure, but the CRT really hit. A nostalgic game on nostalgic tech in a party setting — everyone had a blast.
The CRT TV has since become a popular retro display in the indie scene, with many devs choosing to showcase their projects on the older boxes to help evoke the fond memories within their potential player base.
Family Fun
Sleep Deprivation at Union Sq Staples w/ Marlise & Jose
After a good few days of hustle — from Blick Art Supplies to Jay-Z’s 40/40 Club (I don’t even know, dawg) — working on a party board game prototype titled Road Rage, my friends and I found ourselves at Staples for, like, the fourth time, printing our game tiles and attaching Velcro stickers to present to our peers the next day.
The Road Rage game “board” is actually a cube. Players place their road tiles on the cube to create a clear path for their car, racking up points for specific tile combos, while obstructing other players’ roads.
The cube would turn out to be cursed with unspeakable evil, impacting the lives of the creators and all who played. I’m talking Lament Configuration levels of evil that we had to survive for me to be typing this right now.
But that’s a story for when we’re trusted colleagues…
2015
Project Endall Tests: Learning Motion Capture w/ James
Prototyping Card Games w/ The Boys at KBBQ
Holy Magnificent Monster Mash was a comedic deck-building game where players raced to collect monster body parts, each with different attributes, to “mash” together a monster strong enough to defeat their opponents. The project was a great exercise in balancing a game with many stats.
2016
