COMET KICKER

Duration: Aug 7-Oct 30, 2022, Team Size: 6 people

Contributions: developed the core gameplay in vanilla JavaScript, drew main art and animations, wrote the game's story script, composed title and intro music, supervised Spanish, French and Mandarin translations, designed and implemented the UI, created sound effects for explosions and shooting

RISKY RICO

Duration: Apr 9 - present (ongoing dev support), Team Size: 8 people

Contributions: wrote the core gameplay in C# with Unity 2D, designed all levels and characters, created the combat system, dialog system, text system, and shop system, designed and implemented the VFX/UI, animated all characters with Aseprite and Unity

HALF-METAL

Duration: Nov 28-Feb 27, 2022, Team Size: 8 people

Contributions: developed the core gameplay in vanilla JavaScript, designed all levels through a custom-built editor, wrote the game's story and dialogue, composed title and intro music with FamiTracker, coded pathfinding AI and general enemy behavior, built a simple cutscene system for story sequences

What I Bring to a Project

Rapid Prototyping

Gameplay Programming

UI Design

2D Art

Sustainable productivity

My Tools

JS + Canvas

Figma

Notion

Trello

GameMaker

My Story

Hey, I’m Michael.

I like making games. A lot. Like, a lot a lot. I’ve been doing game dev since I was a teenager, but I always did it alone. My goal back then was to make simple games for my friends and family, just to entertain them for a bit.

But after a while, I wanted to do more.

And I tried doing more. I tried making bigger games on my own, planning out every little detail, but they never got finished. In fact, I barely got anywhere past the Google doc stage of most game designs.

And this only got worse as life responsibilities piled up. I became a senior software engineer in healthcare tech. And my job got hectic! Still does! Balancing gamedev and work felt impossible.

Eventually, I figured I needed help. I couldn’t do it alone any longer, so I signed up for HomeTeam GameDev to start making games with a bigger community. HomeTeam helped me upgrade my game dev skills with the help of a vibrant, collaborative community who all want to do the same thing: make cool games 😎

Three years later and I've now led three multi-month projects to completion, contributed to over 15+ released games, and am currently developing my first commercial title with my studio Hidden Cat Games.

I'm at a point in making games that I never thought I could sustain. Yet here I am, doing it every day.

And you know what? I'm gonna keep on doing it.

My Experience

Frontend Developer at Opteamix, LLC in March 2021

Contributor at HomeTeam GameDev since May 2021, credited in 15+ games

Senior Software Engineer at Maximus, Inc. since February 2022