MICHAEL GUEVARA

Game Designer, Programmer, Producer

SKILL SETS

SAMPLE WORK

PRODUCER WORK

DUNE DECAY - UNIVERSITY DEMO

This project served as my senior thesis as a game design major at GMU. This rouge-lite dungeon-crawling free-action RPG makes use of plenty of mechanics and systems, as well as visuals and audio. Given the Nature of the game’s genre, I had to learn many things about scope and limiting it, as well as properly maintained schedules, pitch presentations, and so on. It will release May of 2025 on itch.io.

RADICAL MAGNETS - DEMO

A key component of being a producer is being able to fill in for roles not covered by the team, and doing everything possible to ensure the game gets completed. To this end, I assumed the responsibility of being the music composer for this arcade-style endless runner worked on by a team of fresh college graduates. Work began on the project in earnest in June of 2024, and released later that same year in August on itch.io.

SPLIT - UNIVERSITY DEMO

My first team project that involved me as lead, this experience taught me the value of delegation and upkeeping team morale. The team consisted of three individuals: the artist, sound designer, and finally me, who handled design, programming, UI, and so on. This 2D puzzle-platformer game demo offers the very unique mechanic of creating clones of the player for use in both combat and puzzle-solving.

PROGRAMMING WORK

PLAYER CLONING

The main mechanic for the Split demo was the player cloning. This ability allows the player to - assuming they’ve obtained buffs to increase their player size - split themselves into equal sized copies. These spawn are then controlled by a pet AI system, which does everything from follow waypoint commands, follow the player, and attack enemies. Furthermore, if the player dies and there’s spawn active in the scene, the closest spawn gets promoted to active player.

SPELL-CRAFTING SYSTEM

As the final to one of my university courses, I was asked to replicate a certain mechanic in a game. Over the course of a week, I designed a spell-crafting system that allows players to spend currency to create scriptable objects that contain player-input given variables, like max spell range and damage range. The entire project took me two weeks, the first week was spend on inventory systems, enemy AI, and world item interactions.

LIGHT BEHAVIOR OVERHAUL

Working in Unity has left me quite dissatisfied with the default lighting support the engine offers. To amend this, and also as just a fun exercise, I wrote a single comprehensive script that allows for various light mode states that alter the basic lighting component considerably, such as an RGB function, pulsing, natural flickering, spasming (as if a broken electrical light), and so on, all of course with options to alter tempos and the like.

MISC. WORK

SAMPLE MUSIC COMPOSITION

SAMPLE ART WORK

Various Magic Icons
Black Hole
Company Logo
Dune Decay Title Card
Desert Dungeon Asset Tiles
Treadplate with Glare Effect

QA EXPERIENCE

AURORA NOVA

Aurora Nova is a story-driven, scifi, roguelike deck-builder where the player is a member of a highly advanced species struggling to avoid extinction. Upgrade your vessels and their capabilities. Explore the galaxy as you prepare to fight the greatest threat the Milky Way has ever seen.

OVER MANY WATERS

Over Many Waters is an exciting Mesoamerican adventure of seafaring and exploration. Play as young Leo, a lost-at-sea Spanish explorer of Spanish and Aztec descent. Adventure the isles of the Azurian Sea, a series of ancient islands and waterways under threat of curse, war, piracy, and invasion.

EMERGING GIANTS

It's survival of the fittest in this turn-based strategy game! Guide the evolutionary strategy of plant life across Earth's huge variety of habitats. Compete against human AI players, or solo selecting real-world adaptations to create the right balance of biodiversity for planetary success.