Games
Hello! My name is Nathan Giesbrecht and I am a Unity programmer, designer, and content creator. I've always loved games, both physical and digital, and am excited about all aspects of game design and development. My goal is to grow creatively through community building, expanding my knowledge of Unity and other game creation engines, and through design.
Through studying programming and game creation at NAIT I have gained experience in UI/UX design, C# coding and the Unity game engine. I am dedicated to excelling at whatever project I am currently engaged in and value the feedback and skills of others to improve not just he product but also our working environment. I am always working towards gaining new skills and putting my experience into practice.
You have 10 seconds to collect a coin to increase your score. Every time you collect a coin the timer resets and an enemy spawns that follows the exact path you've taken through the stage. Stay alive as long as possible and get a high score! Join the beta on the Google Play store!
Trail Grazer is a fast-paced arcade game in development for mobile devices. It is based off my very first game jam game created in 2018, and is being continuously updated with quality of life improvements, visual and performance upgrades, and player requested features.
My goal with this project is to learn more about the Android platform, focus on polish and clarity for the player, and to design a highly replayble challenge for players of all skill levels.
Created with a team for Global Game Jam 2020, Grim Repair is a quick matching game created in under 72 hours.
Return the animals' souls to them before the curtain to the afterlife fully opens!
Use the mouse to drag the matching soul at the bottom of the screen to the animal behind the curtain. Both the animal and pose have to match for the soul to be returned! You get more points the faster you match. The curtain opens faster after each match, and once it's fully open the game is over.
I was the Gameplay Programmer for the team, and was responible for creating the game manager scripts, logic, and controls. It was a great experience working with the team and I learned so much about Unity Events, translating canvas events to the game world, and implementing assets created by other team members with different levels of expereince. It was the first time I had combined mouse interactions in a 3D space, and I am very proud of the results.
Royal Roomble is a local multiplayer game prototype for 2-4 players created during NAIT's Game Programming DMIT program.
Controllers are required.
Place dirt in the arena to guide your knife-wielding Roomba to pop the ballons on your opponents robot vacuums. Be the last Roomba standing, or have the most dirt in your bag when time runs out!
My primary goal with this prototype was to see how indirect control of an object can be engaging in a competitive environment. I experimented more with having 2D elements on the Unity canvas interact with the 3D Objects, as well as having the game be capable of displaying on multiple monitors if desired.
This was an attempt to create a 2D blob-like object in the MonoGame XNA framework. The core math is adapted from Maciej Matyka's paper, "How to Implement Pressure Soft Body Model", and can be found at panoramx.ift.uni.wroc.pl/~maq/eng/index.php
This was an attempt to create a 2D blob-like object in the MonoGame XNA framework. The core math is adapted from Maciej Matyka's paper, "How to Implement Pressure Soft Body Model", and can be found at panoramx.ift.uni.wroc.pl/~maq/eng/index.php
During my time at NAIT, I created a series of a dozen Digital Learning Objects (DLOs) for distance learning. These are created as WebGL builds and accessible by students and instructors.
The purpose of the DLOs are to recreate lessons and labs that would normally be done in person for use in distance learning, or created from scratch to help clarify and reinforce concepts in an engaging and interactive way.
As the only technical role on this project, my job involved communicating with the subject matter experts, designing the DLO, collaborating with the art team to create and then implement required assets, and coded all functionality. The largest challenge of this project was creating funcationality intended for generic implementations, as well as creating ways for potential designers not familiar with the codebase to create more DLOs in the future without the need for extensive Unity knowledge.
Linked below are 3 examples of DLOs I designed and created.
This was an attempt to create a 2D blob-like object in the MonoGame XNA framework. The core math is adapted from Maciej Matyka's paper, "How to Implement Pressure Soft Body Model", and can be found at panoramx.ift.uni.wroc.pl/~maq/eng/index.php
Rock Hospital was a prototype presentation application for a local museum. Made as the capstone project of our time at NAIT, our team was tasked with creating a touch screen application to demonstrate how rock samples are cleaned, repaired, and prepared for display by museum staff.
As the main programmer on a team of artists and designers, we put together a prototype including 3D object rotation using touch, animation, and context sensitive feedback for success or failure using the different tools on the different specimens.
This was an attempt to create a 2D blob-like object in the MonoGame XNA framework. The core math is adapted from Maciej Matyka's paper, "How to Implement Pressure Soft Body Model", and can be found at panoramx.ift.uni.wroc.pl/~maq/eng/index.php
Rainy Day is a touch screen puzzle game about guiding a water droplet to their home in the ocean by using the powers of a transforming cloud named 'Puff'. By turning into different tools and manipulating the environment a path can be cleared for Drop through a variety of simple and elaborate puzzle levels.
The goal of the project was to allow hospital patients with motor impairments to exercise their wrist and arm while still being engaged mentally in the task. Given the brief of an engaging puzzle game featuring arm movement and wrist rotation, I and an artist came up with the concept and level designs. I managed all coding and asset implementation.
This was an attempt to create a 2D blob-like object in the MonoGame XNA framework. The core math is adapted from Maciej Matyka's paper, "How to Implement Pressure Soft Body Model", and can be found at panoramx.ift.uni.wroc.pl/~maq/eng/index.php