BACKBONE
An immersive horror, first-person stealth exploration game spanning approximately 30 minutes, rendered with NTSC analogue-style graphics that mimic the rainbow iridescence of 1970s television. BACKBONE is my contribution to C.H.A.I.N. 3, a collaborative network where each developer builds a game world connected to others through doors. Continuing directly from the network's starting game, it expanded the exposition and connected to three other games. The game recreates an early 70s midwestern basement—a childhood memory of one of the lead characters—using modular architectural assets to build an atmospheric period environment. Technical features include an inspection system for environmental storytelling, a phone call system for delivering dialogue sequences, and stealth gameplay with enemy AI that uses a finite state machine and procedural, physics-based animation. Within the network, BACKBONE bridges multiple narrative threads and establishes mechanical systems used by subsequent developers.
Related Projects
C.H.A.I.N. 3
The third entry in the C.H.A.I.N. experimental series, this project is a spatially distributed network of game worlds, each built by its own developer, bringing together over 120 contributors from the Haunted PS1 collective and the wider indie community. A door in one game leads to a door in another, and the player's save state is shared between them. As co-director and lead technical developer, I built the launcher application that coordinates these transitions and ensures uniformity across the network. Because the scale is larger than any single person can engage with, the launcher also managed distributed QA via a real-time analytics dashboard, using player movement data to surface errors and bugs across the network. This was supported by a custom automated build system for syncing developer builds, along with other purpose-built coordination tools for over 100 simultaneous contributors.
Genesis
A light-gun game inspired by vector graphics that reimagines the credit crawl sequence from Super Smash Bros. Melee (2001). I developed this game as my submission for the C.H.A.I.N.G.E.D. collaboration. The project was an opportunity to explore motion-captured camera work, gameplay-to-music synchronization, a blocking system for sequencing events, and vector-based rendering.
C.H.A.I.N.G.E.D.
A large-scale, collaborative follow-up to C.H.A.I.N., this project connects over 40 developers' games into a branching narrative. After each entry, the player chooses between two games, representing forks in the timeline. My primary contribution was designing the technical architecture that enabled this branching to occur within the launcher itself, rather than individual games. This key decision made the project feasible to implement across multiple engines and contributors. You can play the full collection here and read an interview about the project.
Soap Soup: Sodium
An atmospheric exploration game created for the 2024 SOAP SOUP collaboration, a modding project where artists create abstract rooms using a fixed set of elements. My entry is a sensory experience that places the player in a sodium-lit parking lot on a midsummer night. I designed a soundscape of cicadas and a distant storm, and used spherical projection mapping for the visuals, focusing on creating a realistic and immersive atmosphere of warm light and deep shadow.