James Gaudron is a Game Designer

James is an avid games designer and has a talent for designing board, digital and VR games. .

He is proficient in C#, Python, Java and many other programming languages. He has been designing and developing games since 2020, and working with Unity since 2020.

He is currently completing a Bachelor of IT, Games Design and Development.

Project List

James has been working on a number of projects summarised below – click the links for a more detailed explanation. This isn’t a complete list of projects, just the ones he can show off right now.

  • Ganior’s Arcane Adventure: VR is an immersive virtual reality action fantasy game, where the player plays as a powerful wizard to defeat an evil army, and their leader Azurax.

  • Kingsforge is a 2D fantasy crafting RPG where the player takes the role of a blacksmith in a fantasy city, rich with NPC’s and story.

  • Wreckers is a scifi simulation game where the player takes the role of a space mechanic who strips wrecked ships down for parts to install on their own vessel.

  • Wizard Towers is a fantasy crafting, combat and exploration game where the player takes the role of a wizard building a tower to access the powerful magic of rifts.

  • Sorcerers Solitaire is a single player deck building/collectible card game where the player builds a structure based on 1 of 7 champions.

  • Pico8 Red Riding Hood Platformer was a small project taking just 2 weeks as a test for James’ early game design skills.

Project: Ganiors’ Arcane Showdown: VR

During my studies in 2023, I was part of a group of students who created the below game as the major assignment.

We used Unity and C#, creating new code assets and learning a lot about the suite of tools Unity has to offer. I coded the game and level managers, created the scenery (including the terrain and arena sets), props, pickups, some of the spell effects and many more items. I acted as lead creative and took on the task of reealising our grand designs in Unity.

In order to move fast, we leveraged assets available from the Unity Asset Store and other royalty-free sources, most notably the enemy models seen in the video.

GAS:VR is an a fantasy action adventure game where you play as Ganior, a powerful wizard fighting the evil forces of Azurax to save your home.

This is the trailer for a university group project, completed in about 13 weeks. The footage in this trailer is real game play, recorded on an Meta Quest II.

James Gaudron, Darren Ng and Michael Shield collaborated to create the game.

Assets were used from the Unity Store and a few other sources.

During this project , I created a Game Design Document and presentation about the inner workings of the game. I also planned, filmed, acted and edited the video above.

Kingsforge - A work in progress

Kingsforge is a 2D fantasy crafting RPG where the player takes the role of a blacksmith in a fantasy city, rich with NPC’s and story. James has been working on this concept on and off for more than a year, and has approached the idea in different ways to test it out and to learn more about game. To date, James has created:

  • a prototype game in 2D game using Top Down Engine in Unity Game Design Document (GDD) (link)

  • a full board game in Tabletopia, using cards created in NanDeck, video adjacent

  • character designs in various forms, including hand drawn and using HeroForge, images below

  • a narrative prototype in Unity, video below

  • a full board game in Tabletopia, using cards created in NanDeck https://youtu.be/R-J2SFG6vaM

  • a plethora of other assets, diagrams and plans stored in an indexed bible document.

 

Kingsforge is currently a work in progress. If you’re interested in working on the game or providing funding, contact Tranquil Beast Productions. The above listed artefacts are available upon request.

Narrative Prototype

Prototype City Map

A screenshot of a pixel art/tilemap city, taken within the Unity editor.

Board Game Prototype

Wreckers

Wreckers is a scifi simulation game where the player takes the role of a space mechanic who strips wrecked ships down for parts to install on their own vessel. James has been working on this concept for some time and it was the first game James fully realised as a board game prototype. In the full game, the first-person perspective would allow the player to maintain and tune their spaceship as they strip parts from wrecked ships they have purchased. Challenging elements involve getting the most value from scrap and by handling hazards such as spinning or unstable ships, fire, atmospheric decompressions and radiation. This game lost traction when Hardsapce: Ship Breaker was released – James mostly wanted to make this game to play it himself, and Hardspace scratched the itch.

 

So far, James has experimented with:

·         A physical board game prototype <ADDLINK>

·         Fleshing out the Wreckers world with a horror audio drama, akin to The Magnus Archive

·         A scratch built 3d render of a workshop scene created in Maya https://youtu.be/VrnMDRGZCxY

Wizard Towers

Wizard Towers is a fantasy crafting, combat and exploration game where the player takes the role of a wizard building a tower to access the powerful magic of rifts. The player interacts with villagers depending on their relationship, using a “hate-love, fear-trust” dual axis reputation system. The player must also fight other wizards in magical combat – there can only be one wizard tower!

 

James has experimented with on using the VoxelPlay engine within Unity to create this game with a Minecraft feel. In 2021, James adapted this concept into a single player game on The Game Crafter and entered it into the Solo Duo competition. Wizard Towers (thegamecrafter.com)

Sorcerers Solitaire

Sorcerers Solitaire is a single player deck building/collectible card game where the player builds a structure based on 1 of 7 champions. This design has been developed using NanDeck, and James plans to develop into a CCG to be released over 3 or 4 waves. The game is like a puzzle, where the player attempts to build an optimal structure while following rules about where rooms can be placed.


Riding Hood Platformer

This is a small 8-bit platformer game James made in Pico-8, a simple, all inclusive programming platform.

Pico-8 was chosen as it provides the tools to create everything from scratch- the tiles, the map, the sounds and the code (Lua) but is limited to simple graphics. The game is simple and complete, giving the feel of an early platformer game like Super Mario Bros.

James created this in his spare time in 2021, taking about 20 hours, to test whether his existing skills could be put to use in game design.