CALEB CLIFTON

Studying Software Engineering ● Developing and designing games

• GitHub
• Itch.io
• Medium
• Email

About

Misreflection is a VR physics puzzle game where you solve puzzles and complete challenges with your reflection!Complete 40+ challenges and puzzles spanning across 6 unique levels! These levels include:
● Prologue: Explore the void and learn the fundamentals of the game.
● Catch: Toss a ball back and forth between you and your reflection.
● Unison: Desync with your reflection and position yourself in strange ways.
● Swim-Switch: Swim around and aid your reflection by enabling and disabling paths.
● Carefully Guided: Guide your reflection and yourself through a maze of lasers.
● Dodge: Avoid a series of moving floor tiles on both sides of the mirror.While working on this long-term project, I gained experience in...
- Scripting in C# with ECS practices.
- Designing unique puzzles and levels intended to surprise and excite players.
- Iterating on a game's design with sincere consideration for player feedback.
- Creating and maintaining custom frameworks (level managers, level design tools, etc).
- Developing and building custom tools designed to speed up the game development process.
- Developing on top of tools made by other developers (HurricaneVR and HexaBody).
- Building game software for multiple target platforms in mind (PCVR and Quest 2).
- Utilizing Unity's profiler system for game performance optimization.

Links

• SideQuest (Quest 2)
• Itch.io (PCVR)

Preview (July 2023)

The following video is a short video showcasing the v0.4.0 version of the game.

Project Information

The idea behind Misreflection originates from November 2021, when I originally prototyped it as a 2D game. After receiving positive feedback on the concept and not the execution, I decided to shelf the idea. In October 2022, I decided to prototype the game in VR instead of 2D, and I received much more positive feedback than before. As a result, I decided to embark on creating a ~60-minute gameplay experience as a design and engineering learning exercise. Below are videos of the 2D prototype and the VR prototype:

I eventually released version 0.1.0 in January 2023 on both SideQuest (for Quest 2) and Itch (for PCVR), continuously updating the game through August 2023. Public reception seemed to be pretty good, especially on SideQuest; as good as it could get given its release and current-state circumstances, that is. A young, small Gorilla Tag content creator even made a video of him playing and enjoying v0.1.0, which was really encouraging and informative. Here is that video:

I stopped development in September 2023 for three reasons. First, after many months of iteration and development, I reached a point to where the quality of what I learned no longer outweighed the quantity of the effort I was putting in. While I would have loved to polish and completely finish the experience, I figured that my time was best spent learning something else elsewhere. Secondly, the Unity situation that happened in September 2023 scared me off from using the engine and encouraged me to invest my time into broadening my skillset and learning other game development engines and tools. Lastly, developing this game did a great job of teaching me my strengths and weaknesses. Instead of having to continuously deal with my weaknesses, I decided that I'd much rather begin working with a team that could better allow me to focus on what I'm best at, and vice-versa.Ultimately, I am happy with how Misreflection turned out. It is playable from start to finish, and its game/level design is in an acceptable state of polish.

Dev Blogs

• Dodge Level Design Tool

About

In Look Out!, players uses their platforming skills to dodge an endless onslaught of ricocheting enemies! They can aim for a high score or try to collect all trophies across all three levels!This project was my first ever completed game using the Godot game engine. After a few days of familiarizing myself with the engine, I spent a week prototyping, developing, and iterating upon this game! During this process, I gained experience in...
- Scripting using GDScript.
- Developing games around a tree hierarchy system and the observer pattern.
- Iterating on a game's design based on external feedback.

Links

• Itch.io

Preview

Project Information

Following Unity's bizarre business decisions in September 2023, I decided that it was in my best interests to begin exploring alternative game engines and tools for the development of any future games I work on.It wasn't until the end of October 2023 that life permitted me to begin exploring other options. I began my journey by exploring Godot and watching some Godot 4 tutorial videos. After watching a few tutorials and creating a few minor games, I decided I wanted to create a genuine, small game using the engine; Look Out! is a result of that decision. It was created in exactly 7 days using assets from Kenney and music from Seth_Makes_Sounds!Overall, I greatly enjoyed my experience with Godot; so much so that I think I will be sticking with it for the foreseeable future. I truly think it's an excellent engine, and I can't wait to see what I'm able to accomplish with it in the future.