Games on Matt Down

Horse Racing Solitaire

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Official description: Horse Racing Solitaire is a feel-good mash-up of solitaire and horse racing. Play as an up-and-coming jockey, clear card combos to build speed, and outpace your opponents in the final stretch to win! Collect, train, and breed a stable of charming horses, unlock new tracks around the world, and renovate a homestead ranch as you climb the ranks.

I initially joined Salto Games as Technical Director, converting the core logic to use Metaplay. Overseeing the outsourcing team and freelancers as well as making key contributions to the game, ensuring the architecture is as scalable and stable as is required.

Hot Wheels Race Off+

Fri, 01 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Whilst I was contracting at Hutch I converted Hot Wheels Race Off for release on Apple Arcade. This consisted of removing monetisation and other requirements for a successful Apple Arcade submission.

Vector Field Racing

Sat, 01 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Vector Field racing is a game I worked on/off for a while. Custom physics engine allows for a super smooth gameplay experience even on low-end devices. Mobile-first controls and a real sense of speed. I never quite figured out the meta for this game, so it’s currently not available to play, but I might re-release a streamlined version in the future.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kP5UWYad_wA

Pocket Burger Games

Sun, 01 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Pocket Burger Games was a studio that I co-founded with three others. Our mission was to make games that “People didn’t realise they wanted yet”. We soft-launched several high-quality titles, for which I’m super proud given our team size and limited runway of just over a year.

Emergency Hospital https://apkpure.com/emergency-hospital/com.pocketburger.tomato

PuzzleSaur https://apkpure.com/puzzlesaur-avoid-the-lava/com.PocketBurger.mustard

The Heist https://apkpure.com/the-heist/games.pocketburger.onion

Dicey Heist https://apkpure.com/dicey-heist/com.pocketburger.springonion

Loved Up

Mon, 01 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Loved Up is dating meets Match-3. My key contribution to this game was writing the core match 3 engine using Entitas ECS from scratch. You can read how this game paved the way for Chrome Valley Customs which used our Match-3 engine: https://mobilegamer.biz/the-three-games-space-ape-killed-on-the-road-to-chrome-valley-customs/

Merge Dragons

Tue, 01 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

As part of a small team of developers, I was one of two Unity engineers that oversaw the rise of Merge Dragons from indie game to top-grossing game in the short space of a year, leading to the 250M acquisition by Zynga and lifetime revenues of 1B+. In particular, I was in charge with implementing the core systems to run the monthly events as well as adding the friends and camp visiting features to the game.

New YAHTZEE® With Buddies

Thu, 01 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This was a project I worked on at Mediatonic when Scopely entrusted Mediatonic to make a highly polished version of Dice with Buddies. I was in charge of implementing the Gacha system for winning new dice.

Fantastic Beasts

Sat, 01 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

“Fantastic Beasts – cases from the wizarding world” is a hidden object game developed to coincide with the release of the first Fantastic Beasts movie. The game follows a similar format to games such as Criminal Case where the player must solve hidden object scenes as well as a variety of mini-games to identify the beasts causing havoc in the wizarding world. I was Senior Developer on this project, having architectured the project from scratch as well as developing several of the minigames and visual effects in the game. The game has now had several million downloads, and you’ll even find me playing a character in-game https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Philbert_Chivers

Bounty Stars

Sun, 01 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Bounty stars is a rogue-like/RPG set in space, with a mixture of story-driven elements, crew battles and ship battles. I worked on all aspects of the game. In particular, I made tools for setting up the story elements and engineered the procedural way in which they are displayed in the game. I also set up the animation system, using animation override controllers to re-use a single animation state machine. I also set up the systems for generating procedural enemy characters. Published by DeNA, now sadly taken down following the closure of DeNA West.

Wolfblood Shadow Runners

Wed, 01 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Wolfblood shadow runner is a unity app made for the CBBC show Wolfblood. The game has two main parts – an endless runner mode and a story mode. The gameplay is similar to other endless runners such as subway surfers or temple run. In this game you play as the wolf and swipe to avoid obstacles. You upgrade the wolf as you progress. My responsibilities in this game were creating editor tools for the cutscenes and writing an api that allowed 8-bit sprites to be loaded at runtime, decreasing filesize.

Tree Fu Tom - Conkerball Cup

Tue, 01 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This game was made as an accompaniment to an episode where tree fu tom races in the “Conkerball Cup”. The game was made using html5 canvas and createjs. I was responsible for creating the pseudo-3d racing engine, which was a challenging but enjoyable task given the demands of the game and the limitations of html5 canvas.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/games/tree-fu-tom-conkerball-cup-race

Nina and the neurons: Earth Explorers

Sun, 01 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Nina and the neurons: Earth Explorers was a game made in html and DOM. Each game had a reciprocal version of the same game, either in space or on earth. Responsibilities: I made the rocket/volcanco game and the two jigsaw puzzle games.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/games/ninas-earth-explorers-game

Meteoric

Wed, 01 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Meteoric is an educational game made for the open university. The premise of the game is that you have to select meteors and direct them towards a planet, cratering the planet as efficiently as possible. This game teaches how different characteristics of a meteor such as mass, velocity, etc. affect the resultant crater.

https://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/science/physics-and-astronomy/meteoric

Trianglets

Sat, 01 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Trianglets is a game I made solo in 2012. Inspired by the classic puzzle game Lemmings it utilises original physics-based mechanics to create interesting puzzles.