Ian Sundstrom

• Architected and implemented the majority of core gameplay systems including player movement, stats, abilities, enemies, turn system, and board state.
• Utilized Scriptable Objects to create asset-based approach to content generation. This allows new logic to be added to the game in editor windows without touching code.
• Developed the "Trait" content system. These are Scriptable Objects with modular parameters such as AOE, damage, status effects, and event-based triggers that could be modified and remixed to create all of the player's passives, skills, and even the enemy's behaviours.
• Implemented a dialogue system for character barks. Barks are triggered based on a variety of events such as an enemy taking their turn or being damaged. Optional conditions can be attached such as a shopkeeper only emitting a specific bark if the player is out of gold or low on health. A priority system allows designers to ensure some barks are guaranteed to play while others only occur randomly.
• Used a tree-based search to efficiently randomly generate enemies based on difficulty settings. For each level, a large pool of enemy combinatorics are explored by the algorithm. It makes a selection based on heuristics such as meeting a target challenge rating budget, prioritizing enemy variety, and finding an ideal density of enemies for the size of the level.
• Handled implementation of other core systems such as localization, the settings menu, VFX editors, character animation graph logic, and meta progression systems.

• Worked directly alongside the project's Creative Director to design the game's content.
• Brainstormed and prototyped the six classes of the game. Each class targets a different playstyle. The Trooper supports combat-focused, aggressive players. The Shadow supports stealthy, cunning gameplay. The Oracle allows puzzle-minded players to "solve" levels while trying to avoid combat entirely.
• Developed 100+ passives and traits. Identified ways to remix and reuse mechanics to squeeze more content out of less scope. This systemic approach to content creation allowed our relatively small team to make a product that supports over 40 hours of deep gameplay in only around a year and half of production from prototyping to launch.
• Balanced trait upgrade options and gold costs to ensure the player has compelling choices to make each run.
• Collected feedback during regular playtesting to iterate and improve gameplay mechanics, difficulty ramp, and UX during every stage of development.
• Assisted Creative Director and art team in deciding theming of enemies, passives, and abilities.

• Responsible for all UI implementation and layout in Unity.
• Worked with artists to provide direction and guidance on feasible designs of UI and best UX for gameplay systems.
• Created all button script functionality, runtime menu logic, and tooltip system. Helped implement parallel mouse and controller functionality.
• Made UI flexible to support different screen resolutions and localization. Text fields and containers scale and stretch their size to fit different localized string lengths at runtime.
• Developed a custom extension of the LeanTween to animate UI for menu transitions.

• Implemented numerous RPG systems: swappable teams, creature collection, leveling, ability leveling, damage calculations, inventory, etc.
• Implemented A* pathfinding for movement.
• Enemy unit AI uses various heuristics to assess positioning and the potential use of a variety of different unit abilities.
• Built custom physics, collisions, and raycasting optimized for tile-based maps which replaced the usage of Unity’s built-in physics.

• Created a map editor inside Unity Engine using Editor tools. Maps are read and written to and from .txt files that are <10kb in size.
• Created a cutscene editor that features character dialogue as well as custom events like triggering battles or moving characters about the map.
• Created numerous property drawers and custom inspectors such as a preview of localized text and a waypoint editor for NPC character navigation.

A shader draws toon highlights on glass windows based on the view direction. Distress effect is added based on Voronoi noise.

Waving grass is squashed by characters. Characters remain visible behind walls with a dithering effect.

• Developed mechanics that emphasized the core design pillar of very fast tactics battles that last under 5 minutes, such as restrained battlefield size and limiting most abilities to only one use per battle.
• Eliminated the need for submenus for common actions such as moving and attacking by allowing them to be triggered with a single click instead.
• Designed a modular ability system that can create many different abilities by combining a limited set of building blocks including range, area of effect, target count, status effects inflicted, damage amount, and push/pull effects.
• Using Heroes of Might and Magic III as a base, organized creatures into four major archetypes that each fill a niche in the overall tactics of the battle.

• Built game architecture to work in single-player or split-screen local multiplayer.
• Used Unity's scriptable objects to build data for a clothing purchasing system. Clothing data objects contained information on models, textures, body positioning, item names, and costs.
• Implemented save architecture including player campaign progress and records, images of built towers, character fashion items bought, etc.
• Created a robust input system built on top of InControl for Unity. Supports all popular modern game controllers, mouse, and keyboard controls for 1 or 2 players.
• Used coroutines and lerp functions to create many custom scripted animation effects, such as menus easing in and out, bouncing, or floating buttons.
• Implemented FMOD support and programmed all sound effects and music cues.
• Added localization for 11 languages. Building on top of H.Ibrahim Penekli's open-source tool, "Asset Localization", I created an exporter and importer of .csv files containing translations.

• Handled porting, debugging, and optimization for Nintendo Switch, Google Stadia, and PC/Steam.
• As one of the first indie games on Stadia made in Unity, collaborated closely with Google and Unity to port the game while the engine was developing full support for the platform.
• Implemented extendable architecture to support unique and common platform features such as achievements and leaderboards.

A pinging ring indicates when a player's tower clears the height goal, followed by confetti and juicy UI effects to celebrate their win.

On the world map, warp zones levels have a distorting effect applied to indicate their other dimensionality.

This snappy effect indicates a brick's drop location when it first spawns.

A dynamic mesh fills the bounds of an aquarium with water that can be tilted, tipped, and emptied.

• Developed and balanced stage variations that compliment stacking core mechanic such as stacking bricks on a pair of scales or using bricks to smash weeds before they grow.
• Created randomized mini-games and balanced whether games offered risk, reward, aid, or threat to the player's progress.
• Iterated to create the strongest possible onboarding experience including designing an effective tutorial, controlling the introduction of mechanics, and creating a welcoming difficulty ramp.

• Integrated piece manipulation through mobile touch input including tapping and dragging pieces and snapping them to a hexagonal grid.
• Integrated cross-platform support including microtransactions and leaderboards for both the Apple App Store and Google Play using libGDX framework.
• Wrote scaling logic to ensure graphics displayed appropriately on a variety of device aspect ratios and resolutions.
• Programmed in-game menu with a deep range of settings to allow the player to customize their games.
• Implemented strategic AI that assesses the effectiveness of playing a variety of pieces, ranks them, and chooses a play based on the difficulty setting chosen by the player.
• Wrote algorithms for conversion between HSV and RGB color space and resulting mixes between piece color values to simulate mechanics of paint mixing.

• Playtested and iterated towards a concise, yet effective interactive step-by-step tutorial to teach new players complex novel color-mixing mechanics.
• Used shapes, colors, and tweens to communicate mechanics as much as possible and restrained use of text to maintain a minimalist aesthetic.
• Designed piece variations such as pieces that heal neighbors, bombs that trigger after several turns, walls to block your opponent, and split dual-color pieces to offer extra variety for play.
• Designed systems that encourage players to enjoy the resulting palette from each game including a snazzy animated display that sorts colors by hue, a grid display listing hex color values, and an option for sharing board screenshots to social media.
• Developed a solution to make the game more color-blind-friendly by adding a togglable hue indicator to all pieces.

As an adjunct instructor at Indiana University I have taught the following courses in the Game Design program:

• G300: Production I: An introduction to Unity and Unreal Engine.
• C200: Games Industry: A lecture-focused course on the history, business, and structure of the video game industry.
• G390: Rapid Prototyping: Developed and introduced a course in which students must make a new game each week based on an announced theme.

A slide from a lecture on level design basics.

• Use your spectrum-tuned camera to take photos of aliens. Made for Ludum Dare #48.
• Itch.io Page
• Period: 3 Days in 2021
• Role: Tech Artist
• Created unique spectrum shifting shaders. Added post-processing scanline effect. Designed "spectrum circle" UI.

• Juicy top-down arena shooter about leaping in and out of river rapids to dodge bullets and zip around the stage.
• Play in browser on Itch.io
• Period: Started 2018. Finished and released 2020
• Role: Solo
• Designed and built with Pico-8

• Prototype for a card-based game in which the player places ingredient cards on burners to cook them and trigger effects.
• Period: 2019-2020
• Role: Solo
• Programmed card game mechanics, AI, and an event system to handle different card effects and states.

• A cross-sectional geological jumper. Made for Train Jam 2018
• Itch.io Page
• Period: ~4 days in 2018
• Role: Programmer
• Created circular tile generation, lava simulation, and rotational platforming mechanics.

• A Sokoban puzzle prototype in which you play as a wizard who knows time-looping magic. Cast spells that cause level objects to repeat their behaviors.
• Period: ~1 week in 2020
• Role: Solo
• Created pushing block and conveyor belt mechanics. Designed all level objects to be able to loop states, such as pushing a box once and then having it continue to move in that direction. Designed 9 levels to test the mechanic.

The player casts magic to loop the enemy archer's shooting behavior, then pushes them upwards to break a box and reveal a key.

• I was contracted to make low-poly 3D models to fill out environments where the team couldn't find assets to use.
• In the HUB scene of the city, I provided the main landscape, seascape, and roads that the buildings and trees (which I didn't make) were placed on.
• I provided character models where needed, such as the corgi seen above. In addition, I worked in Unity editor to help decorate a few of the game's scenes.