Open to Junior & Graduate Roles
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
An action-survival loop: gather and build out a walled camp, craft weapons at a bench, then spend a Truffle economy at a wandering merchant NPC, with a tamed companion fighting alongside you.
- 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
A collaborative 2D platformer where you can call your ducklings to fall in behind you on demand, trailing you from sunlit forest canopies into a glowing underground cave.
- 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
The piece explores how identity influences experience. Players walk to a job interview as three different characters; each encounters the same environment, but their journey differs based on who they are.
- 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
I design gameplay systems, then build them. I've spent 4 years doing that on games more ambitious than a solo or small-team project has any business attempting: a procedurally generated roguelite with a full combat suite, and a systems-heavy life-sim that tries to make you feel something through the mechanics, not the story.
My design sense comes from playing games, not studying them, Project Zomboid, Stardew Valley, Terraria, Ark are the ones I keep going back to. I can still back a decision up with the theory when it's needed, I just don't start there.
In 2025 I facilitated Newcastle University's student game jams, helping teams scope an idea down to something they could actually finish, then debugging it with them when it didn't work.
- 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