Seeking a Gameplay Programmer?

I primarily work as a senior full-stack engineer (9+ years).

However, I also have professional experience in Unity and C#. And I apply the same professional rigor from my non—games experience to my games work.

Thus, if your game studio is looking for a senior gameplay engineer, let's chat.

Shoot me an email, and I'll get back to you within the next business day: jasontu4@gmail.com

Otherwise, you can browse my past experience below 👇

Contents

1. Spots 🟡
   a minimalist, match-3 game for web browsers
2. Pocket Pong AR 🏓
   an Augmented Reality game for iOS
3. Prodigies Bells 🔔
   a music education app for iOS and Android
4. PICO-8 Prototypes 👾
   various game sketches for the PICO-8 game engine
5. Writing, Speaking, and Open Source 📣
   sharing what I know online

🟡 Spots

December 2021

I implemented a minimalist, match-3 game in Unity, C#, and GLSL.

This project is a pared-down implementation of Dots: A Game About Connecting by PlayDots.

You can play the game right in your browser by clicking here (opens in new tab).

A GLSL shader implements the progress bar. If you’re curious how it’s implemented, the game is open source; you can inspect the shader here.

You can also review implementation notes here.

The impact

This project landed me a job offer as a Senior Unity Engineer at PlayDots. However, we did not work together due to my team lead commitments at Wonder (my employer) at the time.

🏓 Pocket Pong AR

July 2021 - November 2021

I designed, scoped, implemented, released, and marketed Pocket Pong AR—a mobile AR (Augmented Reality) game for iOS.

If you own an iPhone, give it a play by visiting the itch.io page.

The impact

Pocket Pong AR is my first shipped game, and taught me all the steps needed (scoping, pre-production, production, playtesting) to ship even the simplest of games.

I subsequently wrote a blog post about my experience, which hit #1 on Hacker News and garnered 450+ upvotes.

🔔 Prodigies Bells

January 2021 - March 2021

Prodigies Bells is an iOS application that I worked on for Prodigies Music.

I was brought on as a freelance Unity engineer to handle all software development responsibilities—from UX design, to C# scripting, to app store submissions.

See details about the project in my case study:

How I rehauled Prodigies Music's bell instrument app for 5-star customer ratings

The apps are also freely available for download on iOS or Android.

The impact

I addressed the feedback from Prodigies Music's poor reviews, and many past reviewers revised their app store ratings to 5 stars:

My client Henry was happy with the end result, and left a 5-star review at the end of our contract:

👾 PICO-8 Prototypes

2017 - Present

I make goofy little prototypes in PICO-8: an all-in-one game engine designed for building small games and visual demos.

Then I share the prototypes on Twitter in the form of eye-catching GIFs.

The impact

PICO-8 is an excellent platform for honing your ability to create "hooks" in your games, because you can easily share GIFs on social media.

I created one prototype that garnered 200+ likes on Twitter, as well as many retweets from prominent members of the indie game development community.

📣 Writing, Speaking, and Open Source

2018 - Present

I write blog posts about game development (this blog).

I create YouTube videos about game design and AR (Augmented Reality).

And I create open source projects that other game developers would find useful, such as the Shaders for Game Devs Workbook.

I'm writing a guide called Game Codebase Tours. It's a resource that teaches new game developers how to approach problems and write high-quality code, but by example.

It garnered a huge response on the /r/gamedev subreddit, yielding more than 1.6k upvotes.

Impact

Many of my blog posts have been shared and circulated online: I've reached the Hacker News front page on 4 separate occasions.

Additionally, my email list has grown to over 1k subscribers, and my few YouTube videos have been viewed thousands of times.

I'm skilled at sharing what I know online, and I'm more than happy to do the same for your game studio.

🤝 Let's work together

If you're impressed and would like to work together, simply shoot me an email: jasontu4@gmail.com

I look forward to hearing from you.