Shawn Hayes

Pokemon Trading Card Game Online

Dire Wolf Digital was my big break into the gaming industry in 2018 and this was the first project I worked on there. It was the official digital implementation of the famous card game and when I worked there it was serving upwards of 10000 concurrent players. It unfortunately went down recently in favor of a new implementation. I was responsible for scripting new cards for the game as they came out and of course fixing gameplay bugs. Beyond that I also got to work on some of the games interesting microservices like matchmaking, chat and trading. Working on this project was the biggest level up I ever experienced in my game dev career thus far. I learned not only huge amounts of practical real world coding techniques but also so many frame works and industry tools that I would definitely need to know how to use going forward.

Eternal

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This collectible card game was the biggest part of my career so far. I worked on it as lead of the gameplay team for 3 years from 2020 to 2023. In that time we released dozens of card list updates, fixed huge long standing bugs with the game and released the new story mode feature known as Chapter Battles. I will always remember this time fondly and I am thankful for the opportunity to work on this great game. Not only did I improve my skills of coding and project architecture in this time but I learned a lot about leading and collaborating with other teams as well.

Presta

This was a job I had where I was tasked with building out features for a game meant to be played with a bike trainer (think Peloton). I worked here for about 1 year starting in 2023 and the company went out of business. I learned a lot working here. I made a Unity app for Meta Quest, I worked with blue tooth interfaces, and I got a lot of experience with handling user data. Unfortunately, now there is very little evidence left that the company ever existed and all that work is completely lost to me. That's how it goes in this business sometimes.

Voodoo Fishin'

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For this project I was contracted to create the fishing mechanics and some inventory management mechanics. I worked on it for about a month at the end of 2024. They just came out with a great demo that's up on steam now. Developing fishing mechanics was a totally new challenge for me and I was really proud of how my work came out on this project.

Cardveil

This is a project that I started on with some guys I used to work with at Dire Wolf Digital. It is a roguelite card game and extraction game which hopefully will be a multiplayer ccg as well. I worked on it continuously from October 2024 to February 2025 and now I work on it sporadically. I built the whole game myself in Unity with the other guys providing design and art. I was able to create a really responsive and scalable system for the card gameplay as well as the meta game/map navigation mechanic. So far we have built a demo and we are looking for funding so we can build out the game and add multiplayer.

The Cartographer

Jumping back in time here now, this is a project I worked on in 2018 before I started working at Dire Wolf. It was an idea for a VR game that I sold to Game-U while I was working there and they payed me to make a prototype. It was a short lived project and it ended up not yielding anything that was going to be worth shipping but it was my first foray into the world of VR, which would end up helping me greatly in my time at Presta later. The game itself was basically a puzzle/exploration game where you would draw a map as you explored the level. It took clever advantage of VR hands for the drawing, so at the very least I'm pretty proud of creating that mechanic.

Escape the Club

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This simple 2d platformer was the first game jam I ever did. I admit it's not my greatest work (the gameplay is very loosey goosey) but it holds a special place in my heart as my first entry into the world of game jamming. This was done as part of Global Game Jam 2018 at MIT.

Struggle Of The Rat

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A game that was made for Ludum Dare 2019. It was designed to be kind of like a rogue like but it didn't quite get there. I contributed a system for automatic level generation using a collection of interchangeable assets and I also created a dynamic culling system to improve performance on the sizeable levels.

Crunk Games

This is a collection of game jams that I worked on between 2019 and 2022 with a group of really good friends I met while working at Dire Wolf in Denver, CO. In each one of these games we tried to push each other's abilities and learn new techniques. I definitely learned a lot of great techniques in making these games but more importantly I learned a lot about collaboration. Getting everyone to get their contribution in at the last minute without stepping on eachothers changes or creating any new bugs is a real art in and of itself, not to mention fun and hilarious. These were some of the most fun experiences of game dev that I have had.

Shroom Crunk

A brief 3d platformer adventure game.

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Orb Crunk

An experimental game that uses all scanned watercolor paintings as assets.

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Pump Crunk

An experimental game that makes use of 3d levels and procedurally animated enemies.

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Wrangle Crunk

An game about wrangling cats with a laser pointer.

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Slash Crunk

A quick little hack and slash action game

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