MG Irvine is a passionate and versatile Game Designer and Developer with a strong background in art, storytelling, and interactive media. I thrive on creating engaging game experiences through a blend of creative design and technical development. Whether it’s brainstorming intuitive game mechanics or designing 3D models, I love using my skills to bring ideas to life.I’ve had the opportunity to collaborate with talented teams on game jams, internships, and academic projects, and I’m always excited to work with others to create something innovative and impactful. I’m eager to bring my expertise in Unity, Unreal Engine, C#, C++, and 3D modeling to new projects and continue learning from industry professionals.If you’re looking for a driven, collaborative designer with a passion for game development, let’s connect!

Role: 2D Artist · Concept Designer · Project CoordinatorContributions:
- Produced mood boards, character sheets, and location references to establish and maintain a cohesive visual direction across the team.
- Designed and iterated on tile maps and 2D character animations in Aseprite and Procreate, delivering production-ready assets for integration.
- Maintained task lists and design documentation throughout development, keeping the team aligned on scope and deliverables.Tools & Technologies:
Godot & C#, Miro, Procreate, Aseprite, Discord, Google Workspace

Overview: LSP is a rhythm bullet hell game where players navigate tile-mapped dungeons, dodging and absorbing enemy projectiles to pacify foes. Combat is built around a cooldown-gated absorption mechanic that forces players to balance aggression with survival, creating a risk-reward loop at the core of every encounter.Key Features: Rhythm-Based Combat · Cooldown-Gated Absorption Mechanic · Tile-Mapped Dungeon Layouts · Original 2D Animated Assets

Role: 3D Artist · Concept Designer · ProgrammerContributions:
- Modeled and textured low-poly beetle, ant, and grasshopper rigs with interchangeable modular parts and customizable texture support using Adobe Substance Painter and Maya.
- Designed concept art establishing a colorful, approachable visual identity aimed at broad audience appeal.
- Engineered bug AI with omnidirectional pathfinding, tunnel-digging behavior, and environment interaction systems in Unity and C#.
- Built player-facing UI for real-time bug customization and live stat readouts (age, health, behavior state).Tools & Technologies:
Unity & C#, Unreal Engine & C#, Adobe Substance Painter, AdobePhotoshop, Maya, Procreate,Google Drive, Discord

Overview: Bug Box is a holographic idle simulation built for the Looking Glass display, designed to mimic the wonder of a virtual ant farm. Players customize modular low-poly bugs, observe emergent behaviors within an interactive terrarium, and influence creature interactions in a playful sandbox environment.Key Features: Bug Customization · Omnidirectional AI Pathfinding · Interactive Terrarium · Holographic Multi-Angle Viewing · Day/Night Cycles · Biome Variety

Role: Lead Artist · Concept Designer · 3D ModelerContributions:
- Led art direction across concept, design, and production phases for a multi-discipline team.
- Produced mood boards, character references, and environment sketches to define the game's visual identity.
- Enforced asset organization standards including naming conventions and file structure to support a scalable, handoff-ready production pipeline.
- Modeled and integrated 3D assets into Unity in collaboration with engineering and design teams.Tools & Technologies:
Unity & C#, Adobe Substance Painter, AdobePhotoshop, Maya, Procreate, Miro, Google Sheets, Discord

Overview: Peaceland is a role-playing game set in a fictionalized post-conflict country, exploring themes of memory and empathy as tools for peacebuilding. Developed as a vertically integrated student project with multiple cohorts contributing across disciplines, the game is currently in active development by successor teams building on the original design foundation.

Role: Project Manager · Art Lead · ProgrammerContributions:
- Pivoted the project's core design direction mid-development in response to team constraints, redefining scope and rebuilding the production plan to deliver a shippable game within the remaining timeline.
- Authored game design documents and production schedules, managing task distribution and milestone tracking across the team.
- Prototyped and implemented player movement, collision detection, and loss condition systems in Unity and C#.
- Designed levels and created original sprite art in Procreate.Tools & Technologies:
Unity & C#, Procreate, Google Drive, Discord

Project: Play as a Kiwi Pirate Captain, plunder enemy Chicken Ships for their kiwi fruit before you perish of scurvy on the open seas!

Overview: Kiwi Captain is a casual action game where players helm a Kiwi Pirate ship, plundering enemy Chicken Ships for kiwi fruit before succumbing to scurvy on the open seas. Originally scoped as a cooking game, the project underwent a full design pivot mid-development, requiring a rapid redesign of core mechanics, scope, and deliverables under a 5-week deadline.Key Features: Casual Action Gameplay · Player Ship Movement & Collision · Scurvy Loss Condition · Original Sprite Art · Full Mid-Development Design Pivot

↓ the prototype ↓

Link: Itch.ioRole: Project Manager · Puzzle Designer · Artist7-month group project to raise awareness for mental health issues and self-care.What I did:
- Managed production across a multi-person team over a 7-month development cycle, authoring game design documents and maintaining production plans to keep the project on schedule.
- Designed and implemented navigation-based puzzle mechanics in Unity and C#, building levels around the internal body as both setting and puzzle context.
- Created sprite art and level designs that reinforced the game's biological theme and supported its mental health awareness messaging.Tools & Technologies:
Unity & C#, Procreate, Google Drive, Discord

Project: Play the part of a little white blood cell working to solve puzzles and cure the sickness inside the body.

Overview: InBody is a puzzle game developed over 7 months to raise awareness for mental health and self-care. Players take on the role of a white blood cell navigating through the body, solving pathfinding puzzles to cure illness from within. The project was built with a larger team in Unity and shipped publicly on Itch.io.Key Features: Pathfinding Puzzle Mechanics · Body-As-Environment Level Design · Mental Health Awareness Theme · 7-Month Multi-Discipline Production · Uploaded on Itch.io

Role: Game Developer · Art LeadGame Dev & Algo Prob Solving semester-long puzzle-based horror game.Contributions:
- Designed and implemented environmental trigger and switch interactions in C#, building the puzzle layer that gates level progression.
- Contributed to core game loop design around the draining light resource, balancing survival tension with puzzle solvability.
- Created character sprites, animations, and level layouts, establishing the game's horror aesthetic within MonoGame's rendering pipeline.Tools & Technologies:
Monogame & C#, Visual Studio, Procreate, Google Drive, Discord

Project: Balance a limited light resource to scare off ravenous rats while completing a puzzle to progress through levels.

Overview: Blink is a horror puzzle game built in MonoGame and C# where players must conserve a draining light resource to ward off ravenous rats while solving environmental puzzles to progress through each level. The game creates tension through the constant pressure of resource scarcity, forcing players to prioritize when to spend light and when to endure the dark.Key Features: Draining Light Resource Management · Environmental Trigger Puzzles · Rat Enemy Threat System · Horror Aesthetic · Multi-Level Progression

Link: Itch.ioRole: Sole Developer and ArtistWhat I did:
- Player input & enemy movement code
- Sprite & animations

Resources used:
Unity & C#, Procreate

Project: A simple scarecrow dragon shoot 'em up protecting his crops from ravens and bugs!

Link: Raging ScalesRole: Sole Developer & ArtistWhat I did:
- Sprites & animation
- Player & enemy interaction code
- Utilizing ES6 classes

Resources used:
HTLM, Procreate

Project: A Web-based SHMUP IGME Web Tech Final Project.

✦ Fish Tank Simulator ✦

Link: Itch.ioRole: Sole Developer & ArtistWhat I did:
- Obstacle avoidance & state transitions
- Pathing and flocking code
- Sprite & animations

Resources used:
Unity & C#, Procreate

Project: Simple fish tank simulator. Care for two types of fish by placing the correct fish food if they are hungry, or add a new fish to the tank if they are bored.

✦ Skull Nova ✦

Role: Developer · ArtistContributions:
- Concepted and executed a diaphanization-inspired visual identity, establishing the theme through mood boards, concept art, and a consistent design language applied across all assets.
- Drew fully original player and enemy sprites and animations from scratch in Procreate and Photoshop, replacing all default Unity assets.
-Produced an original intro animatic to establish narrative context and tone before gameplay begins.Tools & Technologies:
Unity, Procreate, Adobe Photoshop

Overview: Skull Nova is a fully reskinned Unity platformer built around a diaphanization-inspired visual theme — drawing from the preserved specimen aesthetic of translucent bodies and exposed skeletal structures, blended with broader skull and bone imagery. Every visual element was replaced with original hand-drawn artwork, transforming a default Unity project into a cohesive, thematically unified game.Key Features: Diaphanization-Inspired Visual Theme · Fully Original Hand-Drawn Sprite Set · Custom Enemy Designs · Intro Animatic · Complete Unity Asset Replacement

Role: 3D Artist · Environment Artist · Technical ArtistWhat I did:
- Modeled, rigged, and animated looping swim cycles for a great white shark and bull shark.
- Procedurally generated base terrain, then manually sculpted it to match Matawan Creek's real geography using photo reference.
- Distributed randomized foliage across the environment using GScatter for a naturalistic result.
- Optimized vegetation with alpha plane cards for ground cover and stylized tree replacements to reduce polygon load.
- Modeled and scaled historically accurate dock structures against reference imagery.
- Developed a water shader for the creek surface.Tools & Technologies:
Blender

Overview: A commissioned 3D environment recreation of Matawan Creek, New Jersey — the site of the 1916 shark attacks that inspired Jaws — produced for a YouTube documentary. The project required historically grounded environment design, optimized real-time-friendly assets, and fully rigged, animated marine life delivered to a client's production timeline.Key Features: Client-Commissioned Work · Rigged & Animated Shark Models · Procedural Terrain Sculpting · GScatter Foliage Distribution · Polygon Optimization · Water Shader Development · Scale-Accurate Environment

Role: Technical ArtistWhat I did:
- Researched and implemented a custom GLSL fragment shader producing a dithering effect that quantizes surface shading based on light intensity, replicating the pixelated look of early 3D graphics.
- Adapted Inigo Quilez's gradient noise algorithm from The Book of Shaders to drive procedural surface coloring on 3D geometry in p5.js WebGL mode.
- Modeled an original low-poly fish and constructed a full scene using stretched and transformed geometric primitives for lily pads, cattails, and a pond surface.
- Iterated across two project phases — first establishing noise-driven color on a 3D model, then building the complete dithering pipeline and scene composition.Tools & Technologies:
P5.JS, GLSL, WebGL, AdobePhotoshop, Maya

P5.JS ✦ GITHUB

Overview: Viridian Moonlight is a stylized 3D scene built in p5.js featuring a hand-crafted GLSL dithering shader and procedural noise applied to low-poly geometry. The project depicts a moonlit pond environment, combining an original fish model with reshaped primitives to create an atmospheric, retro-inspired real-time scene.Key Features: Custom GLSL Dithering Shader · Procedural Gradient Noise · Original 3D Assets · Low-Poly Scene Composition · Orbital Camera Control

Role: Technical Artist · Programmer · IllustratorWhat I did:
- Implemented a metaball system where algae blobs grow, oscillate, and bridge neighboring blobs with bezier curves to create organic fluid shapes.
- Built a radial gradient vignette that grows greener as the algae array fills, providing passive feedback on tank cleanliness without UI elements.
- Integrated an L-system seaweed renderer with boundary detection to prevent branches from escaping tank walls.
- Added click-to-spawn bubble particles and a persistent snail trail to reinforce the player's presence on the glass.
- Wrote a reusable parametric star function supporting straight-edged and bezier-curved styles for decorative particle details.
- Drew original fish, snail, and environmental assets across a full layered tank scene.Tools & Technologies:
P5.JS, GLSL, WebGL, Procreate

✦ P5.JS ✦

Overview: Algae Cleaner is an interactive fish tank simulation built in p5.js where players control a snail suctioned to the inside of a tank's glass, eating procedurally growing algae blobs before they overtake the environment. The project combines custom generative art systems, player-driven interaction, and original hand-drawn assets into a cohesive, contained ecosystem.Key Features: Procedural Metaball Algae Growth · Dynamic Algae Vignette Feedback · L-System Seaweed with Boundary Detection · Click-Spawned Bubble Particles · Original 2D Assets · Contained Tank Environment