Showreel 2020
This showreel is old and I'm not a video editor. You can find the projects in the reel on this page.
Mørkredd
Mørkredd is a game developed by Hyper Games AS here in Norway. During my last semester at school, I got to work with the wonderful team at Hyper Games while I was writing my bachelor's thesis. I mostly worked on developing and testing what kind of shaders and effects would enhance the experience for the player.
This was my first experience working in a team whose goal was to release a game and who had a lot of experience doing precisely that, making it a pretty exciting experience. Going from a school mentality where you have multiple projects simultaneously and must fill various roles to an office setting where I worked on mostly one aspect was very refreshing. Exploring shaders was also an enriching experience as a person who loves making things look pretty/interesting.
You can buy the game on Steam
Robotany
The idea is that you play as a robot taking care of plants. Nurturing them with water so they stay healthy and give you resources. The idea came to me when I saw a prototype of a spider-like robot with a potted plant on its head. I entered Robotany into NGA (Norwegian Game Awards), where it didn't win anything, but one of the judges was very impressed and ranted a bit about how much time he spent making small gardens, which I count as a win.
Robotany is a project I worked on at school with three other classmates for two months. I wanted to make a cute game where your little robot buddy would carry plants on its head and plant them where you directed them. The concept's direction was admittedly rushed beyond that first idea, and some gameplay elements were added with little thought due to the time crunch. I enjoy blending technology with nature, however, so this aspect is worth taking into new projects.
Download it on Itch.io. Be warned, it's a bit of a buggy mess. I'm working on a new version.
Cyberpunky
This project was meant to explore level design in the unreal engine. Creating an atmosphere, leading the player towards points of interest and all that. I was the lead designer for the project, directing the visuals, level design and documentation. The name was supposed to be temporary, but nobody felt like changing it. Thus the very unimaginative name.
I took inspiration from Cyberpunk 2077 as it was still unreleased, and I was excited. I had done a few projects in Unreal Engine intending to learn about game design, but in this project, we were freer to create something from scratch. The idea is that you are fumbling through the city, looking for an access point to cyberspace. You find it in the backroom of a club and enter. Pretty simple, but we had a deadline and several other projects simultaneously.
Juicy Planet
This game explores game juicing or game feel some classmates, and I made for school. It is very heavily inspired by the game "VVVVV" with the gravity flipping mechanic and funky colours. If you want to play it, contact me. It has some copyrighted music, so I don't want to put it up anywhere.
Gamejams
Game Jams are pretty stressful but oh so rewarding when you find that weird and simple yet elegant idea and follow it. I've joined a few Gamejams over the years, with Global Game Jam being the one I usually join. I'm proud of the two here, as they were fun to work on.
The first slide is my game from GGJ 2023. The game is purely controlled with a microphone. The goal is to yell encouraging comments at sad Japanese businessmen and make them happy. The concept is inspired by a video by Shuzo Matsuoka where he stands in the ocean and yells supportive comments at you. I made it together with some of my best friends, where I made all the SFX and mixed the music to fit the game.
The second slide is a game I dubbed "Tower Trouble", where you climb a tower solving small puzzles at each step. I did the design and programming for this one.
The third is a game called "A Slice of Home", where you play as a character calling their parent after leaving their childhood home and living by themselves. I directed a bit but mostly sat back and enjoyed making the music.
If you want to play any of these games, you can find them on my Global Game Jam profile.
Prototypes
An idea isn't good until other people can experience it for themselves. I feel like I have good ideas, but that doesn't mean anything until I can convince others of it too.
In 2022 I started to work on a prototype of a procedurally generated plant system where I could generate a wide variety of plants based on Aristid Lindemeyer's algorithms detailed in "The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants". The idea was to make a more modern version of a Tamagotchi where you take care of a plant, and every person's plant is different based on how you take care of it. It seemed very doable the first months I worked on it, but it got too complex at some point, and I dropped it to work on simpler projects. I also fooled around with the idea of having a real-world plant getting watered if you water the in-game plant and vice versa.
In 2023 I started working on a new version of Robotany. In this new version, I wanted to fix all the perceived problems I had with the old game. Meaning twin-stick style controls instead of shitty mouse-based movement. Learning 3D modelling to make a more compelling space to move in will improve the exploration aspect of the game too. Hand-making chunks of the world and randomly placing them based on rules is something that can bring a lot of replayability but also lets me have control. Keeping the Isometric camera but giving the player the option to snap the camera to the four isometric positions instead of just one. These are the things that will improve the game and will occupy a lot of time to get right. Growing plants, however, is its whole own thing that I'm not totally sure how to do right. I know I want the plants to grow over a long time. Having plants grow without the player is also an aspect I want to explore.