Hi! I'm Clay Kirkwood.
I’m an independent, transgender Game Programmer/Designer based in Adelaide, Australia. I currently work mostly on personal projects in addition to the occasional game jam, largely because I simply enjoy creating things. I enjoy most aspects of game development, thought my skillset largely resides in programming and design, working in both Unity and Godot using C#.
I’m currently studying a degree in Information Technology, Game Development at Flinders University with ideas of further study with a Masters in Data Science. My current degree has helped build a foundation of skills in Programming and Design up until my Placements at Mini Mammoth Games, of which has helped further those skills to the next degree.
Languages
- C#
- HTML
- CSS
- JSON
Engines
- Unity
- Godot
Tools
- Github/Github Desktop
- Fork
- Aseprite
- LitJSON
Fields
- Gameplay Programming
- Gameplay Design
- Scripting
- UI Design
- Spriting
Works of Note
Nomad: Build Again was my first experience developing a game for a game jam, it was also the first project that I contributed to that resulted in a completed game. The game was made for the Global Game Jame 2020, which was hosted out of CDW Studios in Adelaide at the time. I worked on this project prior to starting my University degree, as such the programming is based on experience from my Cert III Vet Course and my own self-taught knowledge.
GRIME was the game I made for the second game jam I participated in, the first Ludwig Jam. It was the first game that I made intentionally for a wider audience and was made almost entirely on my own with the exception being the music and some sound mixing done by a friend of mine. It unfortunately didn’t do very well within the rankings of the jam, but it was nice to receive feedback from other contributors and learn about platform-based issues.
Wheely Bad Day is the first game I made while on Placements at Mini Mammoth Games, I worked with one other programmer, Adam Eustis, for most of my tenure there as well as various Artists and Designers throughout. Although it was the first game I had developed there, I believe it’s the cleanest and most polished game I had worked on, largely due to the simplicity and use of store-bought assets. I largely worked on the gameplay aspects of the game and had most of the control in terms of gameplay design.
Temple Trial was the second game I contributed to whilst at Mini Mammoth. While it’s rough around the edges, I believe it helped me a lot in learning how much is too much and let me experiment with parts of the engine I hadn’t touched prior. I largely worked on the Gameplay Programming for Temple Trial as well. Although we had several designers on the team working with us at the time, so I had less of a hand in designing the game.
Although I had made small contributions in other projects, Splatter Blaster was the last completed game the I had worked on. While I had less of a hand in the idea of the game due to having a designer for the first few weeks of development, I generally took charge of gameplay and level design, as well as gameplay programming. Splatter Blaster was where I really started to mess around with Shader Graph to try and create these satisfying objects where you could see the liquid sloshing around inside.
