Peter Parker

Game Development

My skills are strongest within the areas of production, gameplay design, and pixel art, with additional experience in music composition and writing.

I am most familiar with working in the Unity game engine and C# programming language, but have also worked in Unreal 4 and Construct 3.

I primarily use Aseprite to create pixel art and FL Studio to create music, and am familiar with other development software/services such as 3DS Max, git/GitHub, and Jira.

Here is a selection of some of my works relating to game design and development.

Game art and animations: Behance

Game music: SoundCloud

Full Software Familiarity:

Eras Rising


Game developed by Stellar Stoats
Date: Ongoing
Software: Unity, Aseprite, Trello
Roles: Production, Game & Level Design, Pixel Art & Animation, Programming
Early Access version on Steam | Selection of game art

Eras Rising originally started as a group project for GMU's Computer Game Design program capstone. Our group is now fleshing out the game and planning on releasing it fully on Steam and itch.io.

Eras Rising is a single player grid-based tactics game focused on unit position manipulation and movement in combat. The player will experience the narrative of the game by exploring a 3D overworld that transitions seamlessly into 2D combat when encountering an enemy.

I am primarily responsible for environmental art and level design, character sprites and animations, and overworld programming. After the conclusion of the capstone class, I took over production duties: managing our timeline, team members' tasks and sprints, and public announcements and promotion of the game.




George Mason: A Declaration of Rites


University Game (Class Assignment)
Date: Fall 2021
Software: Unity, JIRA, FL Studio
Roles: Product Owner, Music, Additional SFX, VFX, and Programming
itch.io | Soundtrack

George Mason: A Declaration of Rites (DoR), is a puzzle-platforming adventure game. Unlike most university assignments, DoR was created not by a single group of a few students, but by the entire class. As such, the class was divided into various teams (Design, Art, Sound, Programming) to work on different parts of the game.

As Product Owner, I was responsible for coordinating the team leads and making sure each team was completing their tasks in tangent with each other and helping to resolve any potential issues that may have arised. I also stepped in to do hands-on work if needed, such as programming animations, creating additional SFX and VFX. and editing the final trailer, shown above.

I also participated as the composer for the game’s soundtrack. Early on in development, the Design Team wanted to go in the direction of a haunting, yet slightly whimsical sound, and gave Celeste as a reference game. I also drew influence from the melodies of colonial drinking songs when creating some of the tracks. The full OST can be found on SoundCloud, linked above.




Project Janus


University Game (Group Assignment)
Date: Spring 2021
Software: Unreal 4, FL Studio
Roles: Music
Soundtrack

Project Janus is a side-scrolling shooter in which you play as the titular character Janus, the Roman-god-turned-night-watchman. Janus is tasked with patrolling a mysterious museum at night, getting rid of ghosts that appear along the way.

I created the soundtrack for the game, linked above. I felt that a good direction to go in would be to balance a sense of fear and anticipation with faster action, which ended up being a fun creative exercise.




Game Narrative Review


University Essay (Individual Assignment)
Date: Spring 2020
Full Text

For GDC's 2020 Game Narrative Review competition, I chose to review Transistor, Supergiant Games' 2014 action RPG. In it, I break down the game's story and how it is told through traditional storytelling and gameplay elements. Due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic the essay could not be submitted on-time for that year’s GDC competition.




Original Story Design


University Writing Project (Individual Assignment)
Date: Spring 2020
Full Text

As the final project for a Game Writing class, I was tasked with creating an original story design and presenting it in the form of a game design document. I created narrative and design elements for a hypothetical RPG with social sim and platform fighting mechanics.




Overtale Sound Rework


University Sound Project (Group Assignment)
Date: Spring 2020
Software: FL Studio
Soundtrack

These are songs I created for a university project. The group assignment was to take an existing video game and replace the audio with your own. Our group decided to go with an Undertale parody created in RPG Maker called "Overtale". This was my first foray into making music for games.




Sick


Game (Personal Project)
Date: Summer 2019
Software: Construct 3, Photoshop
Roles: Design, Programming, Pixel Art
itch.io

Sick is a mini game I designed and programmed myself in Construct 3. The goal is to collect the orbs from each object in the room in the correct order. Very simple, but it acted as a good small exercise in creating another completed project on my own.




Figment Midterm Project


University Game (Group Assignment)
Date: Spring 2019
Software: Unity, Photoshop
Roles: Design, Programming, Pixel Art
itch.io (password:figment)

For a midterm project in one of my classes, our group was tasked with creating a game within a testbed for the hypothetical "Figment" console. The goal of the game is to escape the room you are trapped in by figuring out the correct pattern of circles on the door. The pattern is based on the objects present in the room, with the combination of objects being different every time you play the game.

After designing the game with my group, I then ended up programming the vast majority of the game and creating most of the art.




God Of War Competitor Research Project


University Presentation (Individual Assignment)
Date: Spring 2019
Full PowerPoint Presentation w/ Speaker Notes

The task for this project was to research a popular game and find out why it was successful and why it worked well as a cohesive product, with the intention of later outlining a design for a potential competitor for said game. The final project deliverable was a class presentation.

I was assigned God Of War (2018). I honed in on its status as a long-time PlayStation franchise, and the game's subsequent subversion of the franchise's traditional gameplay and narrative in order to age and adjust alongside its audience (and changing gaming landscape).




Relic Tactics


Game (Personal Project)
Date: Summer 2018
Software: Construct 3, Photoshop
Roles: Design, Programming, Pixel Art
itch.io

Relic Tactics is a tactical turn-based local PvP game playable in-browser via itch.io, linked above. The game originally started as a university assignment that I eventually expanded and completed 100% of on my own.

Relic Tactics was a great experience in developing and self-releasing a game from start to finish. Creating all the art, experimenting with map design, and fixing and refining mechanics felt all the more rewarding. Screenshots from the game can be found on my Behance.




History of Camera Perspective in SRPGs Research Project


University Video Presentation (Individual Assignment)
Date: Spring 2018

The task for this assignment was to research and present your findings on a topic related to video game history.

In the video, I outline a change in a facet of the SRPG genre: the shift in camera angle from a top-down perspective to an isometric perspective, and why I think that change occured.




Penterra


Game (Group Project)
Date: Spring 2017
Software: GameMaker Studio 2, Photoshop, Publisher
Roles: Design, Pixel Art
itch.io (password: penterra) | Full Text

Penterra is a top-down action game some friends and I created in our senior year of high school for a game competition. The game itself consists of a demo as a proof of concept for a full game.

We worked collaboratively on the game design, while I worked primarily on the in-game character sprites and animation, as well as structure and object art. Examples of what I worked on can be found on my Behance.

After finishing up the demo, I created a multi-page spread detailing development of the Penterra demo for our high school magazine, linked above.