Technical Designer
𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐒𝐜𝐡𝐰𝐢𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐫
I am a tech designer and indie founder with several shipped titles on Steam, and am a former revenue operations manager for SaaS AI, outsourced sales, and B2B telecom companies.
I am specifically driven to to become an AI designer, inspired by games such as Alien: Isolation and The Last of Us, emulating human (or alien) behaviors that push the limits of realism and emotional player experiences.
If a game I’ve made or a class I’ve taught has improved someone’s life - either through helping through a tough time or helping them to realize they wanted to become a developer themselves - I’ll know I’ve made it.
Thank you for checking out my portfolio!
Flagship Projects
A Science Fiction survival game where you are an astronaut climbing and vaulting between asteroids to reach your shuttle to escape to safety. Key features are a 3D minimap, zero gravity movement, and an advanced asteroid crawling mechanic supported by a finite state machine. I designed the above and developed the minimap tracking function.
A narrative driven puzzle platformer in a post-apocalyptic setting. This game is the result of a multi-year student driven project as part of a university owned studio and publisher. I was hired to operate as Assistant Design Director for the studio, managing multiple interdisciplinary teams. Studio size has totaled as many as 40 undergraduate students during my tenure.
A visual novel-style RPG in an original high fantasy setting, released on Steam. Key design elements are narrative driven combat systems, lockpicking mechanisms, and character designs accompanied by soundtracks composed in-house with Play Star Studio.
LuxDrive EX is a side-scrolling action platformer in which you play as Lux, a courageous horticulturist-explorer, rebuilding and restoring regions back to their sustainable practices for animals and people to enjoy. I designed enemy behavior, level design, and developed the Regrowth System present in the game.
Other Projects
LucidScape
2D action platformer themed around childhood nightmares, now on Steam. Created by Play Star Studio operating with a team of 23.
Rapid Prototyping
This is a collection of seven one-week projects, capped with a two-week final where each week featured a different level. The levels are focused on implementation of the pattern generation process from A Pattern Language for Game Design and architectural approaches to game design.
Enemy AI Behaviors
This is a collection of four milestones in enemy AI behavior development in Unreal 3D utilizing Dijkstra and A* implementations as well as significant usage of both blueprints and behavior trees for enemy decision making.
Frog Knight
This is a prototype stage dark fantasy roguelike with top-down elements. I am the design director on this project and have designed the procedural world generation system utilizing polygonal map creation for a turn-based top down RPG. Additionally, I have been developing attribute, ability, perception, and time management systems for further implementation by designers and developers.
Sabotage Shuffle
An original design card game created to emulate social interaction, misinformation games. Features simultaneous action, social, and deduction elements.