Conjure Chaos

I was the co-team lead and programming lead on a team of 8 UCI students (4 programmers and 4 artists) developing a 2d magical arena figthing game in Unity using C#. The game has 16 waves plus a boss fight, 35 distinct stacking upgrades, and 12 different enemies with 6 unique types. For this game, we were really focusing on giving the player a sense that they are becoming powerful as they build up a pool of upgrades and I think the team did a great job of that. There are about 15-20 minutes of gameplay in one run from start to finish, but the game is quite challenging and will probably take several attempts to beat. The game is free to download on itch.io.

I personally architected and implemented the upgrade management system, and programmed almost all of the UI elements, and many of the upgrade effects. I also helped guide the programming team, some of which were beginners in the Unity engine.

I also came back to the project 5 months later (spring of 2024) to add additional content, improve the audio and visuals, fix bugs, and rebalance the game. The new content included 6 new upgrades, 1 new enemy type, and a final boss fight. Working on something I had not worked on in several months presented some unique challenges. Part of these challenges were related to relearning the code base. The bigger challenge was implementing new features into a code base that wasn't originally built to support them. Since the original scope of the project was limited to a 7 week development period, and a significant amount of this time was spent heping beginner game programmers, many decisions were made to set boundaries for what would and would not be supported by the code. While reworking the codebase to support new features like a boss, improved audio, and more complex upgrades and upgrade interactions, I had to decide when it was productive to modify and build on existing code, and when it was better to remove and redo the old code.

I also returned to developing the game 10 months after that (winter of 2025) to add 6 new upgrades and a new wave. I also reworked some of the enemy AIs, and rebalanced many of the existing upgrades. For this update, the game also got improved sound effects and UI art.