Lead Developer & Designer
Mobile: Augmented Reality
1
~3 Months
Chess Run
Barton Studios AR Gallery is a cloud-based augmented reality application developed for Barton Studios, designed to blend fine art with interactive digital overlays including animations, video elements, and curated multimedia content. The application transforms physical artwork into interactive AR experiences accessible via mobile devices.
Overview
I led the project across programming, game design, art direction, optimization, tooling, and marketing while managing a small multidisciplinary team.
Compared to my previous projects, this one was much more about shipping fast, building clean systems from day one, and making sure everything (gameplay, visuals, and marketing) lined up under one direction.
Main responsibilities included:
- Gameplay programming
- Game design
- Art direction
- UI & level design
- Optimization
- Tooling
- Marketing & publishing
- Team mentoring
Technical Break Down
Contributions
- Managed production using Jira
- Guided a small team of developers, artists, and a sound designer
- Set coding standards and helped keep systems clean and scalable
- Made sure gameplay, art, and UI all stayed aligned technically and visually
- Conducted Sprint Meetings once a week
- Built the core gameplay loop around chess movement and real-time survival mechanics
- Implemented multi-slash combat system with directional attack logic
- Designed scalable systems for abilities, enemy logic, and chess piece movement
- Integrated game feel and feedback using Feel
- Built a modular tutorial system (still early-stage, but designed to scale across future projects)
-
Built a set of editor tools inside Unity to speed up production:
- Quick-play / instant launch tools for testing runs
- UI auto-anchor tools to speed up responsive UI setup
- Cleanup tools to reduce project clutter and memory usage
- These ended up saving a lot of time for both me and the team during production
-
Did multiple optimization passes across the project:
- Light baking
- Texture and material optimization
- Occlusion culling setup
- Mesh grouping and draw call reduction
- General performance tuning for mobile/PC
- Helped junior artists understand how to export assets properly (like using texture atlases and shared materials to avoid unnecessary draw calls)
- Designed the core loop: survive, chain kills, and push risk/reward combos
- Balanced abilities, enemy pressure, and difficulty scaling over time
- Focused heavily on readability, especially since the screen gets chaotic fast
- Designed transformation mechanics (King → Queen/Rook/Bishop/Knight) with limited-time power windows
- Acted as art lead and defined the overall visual direction of the game
- Worked directly with artists to maintain consistency and clarity in gameplay visuals
-
Designed and implemented:
- Main menu
- Level 1
- Level 3
- Core UI flow and layout
- Made sure everything stayed readable even when the board gets hectic
Marketing & Publishing
Key REsults
- Built a full arcade gameplay system with scalable architecture
- Led a small team across engineering, art, and publishing
- Shipped a complete game in ~9 months
- Created reusable tooling systems for faster development
- Handled both development and marketing end-to-end
- Maintained performance and readability despite fast-paced gameplay
Tech Stack
- Unity
- C#
- Strategy Pattern
- FSM Architecture
- Service Locator
- Singleton Services
- Custom Unity Editor Tools
- Object Pooling concepts (light use)
- Jira