A gamified app that uses games to guide people to real world locations and keep them engaged. Alongside one programmer and one artist I built over eight casual games, all built on skill and repetition, plus a narrative quest layer that sends users to real places to take pictures or read the space for clues to a riddle.
Every game in this collection shares a unified meta-progression system: players complete in-game objectives to gather chests, which then unlock discounts for specific real-world partner stores.
Crossy Pollo — brand-sponsored casual game, in app
An evasion game where players move a cat left and right to eat sushi and treats while dodging bombs, driven by a countdown timer that can be extended with power-ups.
Core Systems: Horizontal input limitation, randomized entity spawning (hazards vs. rewards), and a dynamic timer loop that acts as the primary fail state.
An endless runner starring a surfing turtle dodging palm trees, boats, and planes (featuring integrated ads), with a high-risk mechanic that drops golden coconuts for grazing obstacles.
Core Systems: Procedural obstacle generation, proximity detection/hitboxes (grazing vs. crashing), and dynamic ad-placement mapping.
A top-down driving game where players navigate traffic, manage a decaying fuel meter by collecting gas, and earn bonus points for narrowly missing other cars.
Core Systems: Continuous vertical scrolling, resource degradation and replenishment (fuel economy), and near-miss collision tracking.
A Frogger-style game where a chicken crosses different biomes, utilizes power-ups, completes delivery sub-objectives, and faces an instant-death penalty from a condor for idling.
Core Systems: Lane-based movement grid, state-based buff timers (speed/invincibility), secondary quest tracking (deliveries), and idle/repetitive input detection logic.
A tap-to-fly avoidance game heavily inspired by Flappy Bird mechanics.
Core Systems: Impulse-based gravity physics (tap to add vertical force) and continuous side-scrolling gap generation.
A horde-survival squash game where players tap to crush over 8 types of space bugs, each with unique health pools, speeds, and behaviors upon death.
Core Systems: Multi-touch input processing, wave/horde pacing director, and enemy state machines handling distinct health, movement, and death-event triggers.
A top-down shoot-’em-up where a wizard defends his farm from descending bacteria, grabbing power-ups to scale his damage while the garden visually wilts as it takes hits.
Core Systems: Projectile collision detection, incremental power-up stacking, and a diegetic UI system mapping the player’s numerical health to the garden’s visual state.
A progressive memory matching game where players must recall card locations and pair them with on-screen prompts, speeding up with each turn.
Core Systems: Grid-state memory tracking, dynamic difficulty adjustment (scaling time and complexity), and prompt-validation logic.
A basic trivia game utilized to feature customized questions and content directly from various business partners.
Core Systems: Question/answer database querying, partner-specific content tagging, and basic score validation.
A visual reinterpretation of the classic 2048 puzzle game, featuring a thematic garden and sandbox aesthetic instead of standard numbers.
Core Systems: Grid array manipulation (sliding and merging logic) directly mapped to custom visual asset progression.
Leading a lean team consisting of one programmer and one artist, the development of these eight casual titles required comprehensive oversight from concept to deployment. The design philosophy across the entire portfolio prioritized skill, repetition, and engaging retention loops.
Game Design & Balancing: Engineered the core mechanics, tuning difficulty curves, pacing directors, and resource economies to ensure fair but challenging loops.
Production & Scope Definition: Managed the agile development pipeline, establishing clear technical boundaries and feature scopes to ensure consistent, on-time delivery for each title.
Art Direction & Testing: Defined the visual aesthetics—ranging from thematic UI to distinct character biomes—and led rigorous testing to refine hitboxes, multi-touch responsiveness, and input logic.
Modular Systems & Throughput: Developed modular based design systems to reduce game design development, shipping a fully finished game every two to three weeks.
Quest & Narrative Systems: Designed the overarching meta-progression layer to drive real-world engagement. This included mapping out interactive quests that directed players to physical locations to analyze spaces, take photos, and solve riddles to unlock chests and secure partner discounts.
A small team of three, so the pipeline was built around daily meet-ups and working closely to reduce information lag. When possible we worked connected — an open channel rather than scheduled handovers.
We kick off with a morning sync to prioritize tasks, and the open-channel setup lets us drop in and resolve blockers instantly without scheduling overhead. We close out with a brief end-of-day touchpoint to catch any deviations, which lets me prep solutions for the next morning.
To anchor that, I keep strict meeting hygiene: every discussion ends with a verbal summary of what we agreed, and the actionable notes go straight into the group chat for full visibility. On a two-to-three week shipping cadence, a misunderstanding costs a whole title.
While the development cycle was a major success, evaluating the live performance of the games revealed clear areas for future systemic improvement.