Tal Scheffer, game developer
Game Developer
Gameplay Programming · Game Design · Unity/C#
Shipped · Steam demo live · 2023–2026
Lead Gameplay Programmer · Unity/C# · Steam Demo
A Tale of Sand and Bone
"You play as Shai, a fallen warrior bound to a vengeful spirit, climbing and fighting your way to claim vengeance against the gods."
Key engineering areas
Combat architecture · Enemy AI · Procedural level generation · Weapons & inventory · Health / damage / poise · Checkpoints & fast travel · Designer-facing editor tools
- Built modular combat, weapon, shield, poise, health and damage systems, tunable without code changes.
- Designed and implemented the procedural level-generation pipeline, plus Odin editor tools for combat testing and graph validation that speed up design iteration.
- Built reusable gameplay architecture using VContainer, UniTask, R3 and hierarchical FSMs.
Shipped · Collaboration with artist, playable on itch.io · 2025
Designer & Programmer · Unity/C# · Itch.io Release
Below
Below is a really personal project and a love letter to the kinds of games that first inspired me to create. I built it in just 12 days, and so it pushed me to work under an extremely tight deadline without compromising on my core vision, atmosphere, or level of polish that I wanted to achieve. It's one of the projects I'm most proud of.
- Owned design and programming from concept to release, alongside an artist collaborator.
- Designed encounters around player psychology: cramped routes, verticality, silence and contrast.
- Built the NPC dialogue tooling, jump-buffered movement, checkpoints and level transitions.
Solo · Unity
Solo Developer · Design & Programming · Unity/C#
Truffle Keeper
A personal passion project. As a lover of survival-crafting games, I wanted to make my own. I learned so much about managing a larger project, scope, working within a large codebase. Truffle Keeper challenged me to learn from existing games to create a strong combat system and a navigable UI with good UX. During the day you gather resources, build defenses, explore the area, and at night you defend your camp from an onslaught of cute but really angry mushrooms.
- Designed the gather, build, craft and trade loop, then built every system behind it.
- Built base-building and structure placement, from grid validation to persistence.
- Designed and implemented the Truffle economy, a wandering merchant and a companion's combat AI.
University project · 2023
Sole Programmer · Unity/C# · Team Project
Duck Game
I made this game with my first year roommate. As a student of Animation, she needed someone with the technical expertise to realise her vision. I pushed us to make something ambitious, despite working on my exams at the time. Despite a stressful few weeks, I believe we managed to create something truly unique. You have to carefully navigate a role as a mother of several ducklings, recovering them and leading them to safety.
- Designed and implemented the on-demand duckling-follow system: a trailing formation of AI companions that can be called in and out of formation at will.
- Built the 2D platforming movement and the forest-to-cave level traversal.
- As sole programmer, also built the FSM-driven AI, health and damage, abilities, UI and audio.
Newcastle · Inclusivity Game Jam · Nov 2023
Gameplay Programmer · 48-Hour Game Jam
The Interview
This game attempts to use satire to explore how identity can shape an important aspect of people's lives: the job interview. The game is split into two stages, the walk there and the job interview itself, combining a side-scrolling adventure with a visual novel. Players play as three different characters to explore how conversations and challenges differ according to race and gender.
- Built the branching dialogue and choice system driving three distinct character playthroughs.
- Implemented the shared player movement and interaction systems reused across all three character paths.
Tools for Design Iteration
Editor Tooling
Built to speed up design iteration, including my own: tune, test and validate content in-editor, no code change needed.
About
A short summary about me
People tend to think I exaggerate when I say game development is my life, and I'm really not. I pour all my creative energy into the things I create. I am relentlessly persistent in design, programming, sound, and all other aspects of development.
My design philosophy is to have meticulous care for the hundreds of small details, with the belief that to someone, it will have a profound impact.
I think our ability to create is one thing that makes our species so unique, and video games combine so many different forms of expression, and that's why I dedicate myself to crafting them. Creating a game forces you to learn things you never would have expected, and I'm grateful to be around at a time when they are so appreciated.
I'm just a dude with an immense passion for making games, and being part of a team that makes them.
- Programming
- Gameplay systems, combat, enemy AI, procgen, editor tooling
- Design
- Mechanics, systems, encounters, playtesting
- Education
- Newcastle University
BSc Computer Science (Game Engineering)
2023–2026 - Languages
- C#, Python, Java
- Unity
- Unity 2022.3 / Unity 6, Editor tooling, ScriptableObjects, Addressables, Input System, Cinemachine, URP, Tilemaps
- Architecture
- VContainer / Zenject, R3, UniTask, VitalRouter, LitMotion, Odin Inspector, object pooling, state machines