Side Projects

An incomplete list of side projects to showcase additional skills, and a general passion for what I’m doing:

The Study

A mix of visual novel and real life experiment.

• After having spent too much time on programming- and design-heavy projects I wanted to work on something small that allowed me to focus more on writing and presentation

ECS Necromancer

Test project to learn Unity DOTS incl. ECS.

• The player can summon components that are useful on their own, but even more powerful when combined with another

brb App

A mix of TikTok and game engine.

• I got asked whether I would be interested in helping with the app brb – and agreed out of curiosity.

The primary goal was to improve the overall quality of games users create, as well as the editor experience – which in the end meant I mostly worked on improving the UX:

• Improved Game Editor: created intuitive Transform handle (move, rotate, scale, duplicate, delete) that allowed to design levels in seconds, simplified menus, decreased amount of buttons, automated tedious configuration of visual and audio effects
• Self-explaining games: by automatically adding visual and audio effects depending on each game element’s functionality (seek vs. avoid)
• Readability: shadows behind all game elements make them stick out from any background
• Meme games: being able to add texts to game elements is crucial in order to create ‚Meme games‘
• New foundation: Prepared a way to configure game elements 100% modularly instead of needing to select rigid and abstract game element types (Generator, Trap, Pushable,…).
  This would allow WAY more variation among different games, keeps the Editor clutter-free if we would add more features over time, and ensures compatibility with existing games.
  Unfortunately we didn’t get far enough to implement it…

Sky Mammoths

My ‚pandemy project‘: A mix of twin stick shooter and resource management game

• Raid freighters that carry essential resources controlled by monopolies. Save yourself and others by hunting ‚Sky Mammoths‘ and redistributing the stolen resources.
• More infos: Steam page

The Ever​-​Dreaming Universe

6 song EP with piano / instrumental music. Inspired by Blues and romantic music from the 1950s

_{The Ever​-​Dreaming Universe (2018-2020)}

Food Delivery App concept

A food delivery app that makes it easier to take the allergies and food preferences of everyone in the group into account when ordering.

• Created in order to get more familiar with UX/UI Design and Adobe XD
• Based on individual allergies and food preferences suggests most fitting restaurants, so that everyone can choose from more than just a single dish

‚The Self-Organizing Universe‘ Game

Slightly megalomaniac attempt to create a game that helps to understand the universe better – and to feel less alienated in a world where to many the concept of a God doesn’t make sense anymore.

• Often there’s the intuitive idea of the universe being ‚mechanical‘, ‚dead‘, and ‚too far away‘ for us to care about it. However the idea for the game was to question these ideas, and to draw inspiration for bigger questions from it:
• mechanical → Looking closer at space, time and quantum mechanics should make very soon clear, that these alone are already very organic and so complex, we still haven’t understood most of it
• dead → The universe literally brought up life on its own, without needing someone ‚alive‘ to help, just by evolving more and more dynamics – and still continues to do so
• too far away → Well it can’t be any closer: at no point in the universe would all these stars and planets look any closer – only one of them could be close at a time (like planet earth in our case). On an emotional level: all atoms (a.k.a. everything) on this planet are the result from former suns and collisions with planets, and will continue to travel to other suns and planets after the sun blew up Earth. And on a spooky level: there’s also quantum entanglement.

I noticed quite soon that reaching this goal is more than just ambitious.

Puzzle Level Generator + AI

Tool that helps to speed up production of (puzzle) game content.

• Feel free to approach me if you want to know more about it

Mining for Meaning

F2P Casual Mobile Game developed by myself.

• I wanted to explore fresh gameplay that didn’t exist like that yet, and better connecting gameplay with story
• More infos: Google Play page

Space Rafts

My bachelor thesis project for Game Design at the HTW Berlin.

• I wanted to create a casual turn based strategy game, that doesn’t require any numbers, math or calculation at all

Spectacular Sandman

Side project while I was still a student, to learn more about level design, balancing and pacing.

• I got back then a few Youtube influencers creating videos about the game. There was a really hilarious „Rampage“ video with a girl at one point negotiating with god what he wants her to do so he finally „allows“ her to win the level she was stuck on. Unfortunately it has been deleted by now, but she won the level after suggesting to eat a new-born baby…

Tunnel

My application homework that allowed me to study Game Design at the HTW Berlin in 2010.

• The topic was „Tunnel“. This inspired me to make a game about a huge „space alga“, shaped like connected, transparent tunnels. It stranded on planet earth, in the Atacama desert.
• The game was meant to be played on iPad.