Paul Bichler

In Spellcaster University, you take on the role of the director of a magic university in a colourful world of heroic fantasy. Build your school, manage your budget, recruit teachers. Will you turn it into a black magic academy, with the best professors of necromancy and demonology? Or a place in harmony with nature to train druids and shamans? Or why not train adventurous mages, offering them options to learn how to fight and be stealthy? But this will require surviving the ruthless attacks of the orc tribes and the controls of the education authorities.

Spellcaster University was developed in Unity by Sneaky Yak Studio. At Red Art Games, I was part of the porting team, tasked with preparing the game to be ported to consoles by adding Gamepad Support, redesigning the UI and optimizing the game. In addition, I worked closely with the QA team to ensure that the game ran smoothly on all platforms.

Norsevar is a Norse mythology-themed action RPG with a Hack n' Slash combat system, in which the player plays as a Viking with a one-handed axe and a shield, fighting his way through beautiful snowy landscapes and villages. The game features several different enemies and a diverse combat system, including a Status Effect System (to apply poison, freeze, ... effects), a Stats System and an Upgrade System. Norsevar was developed as a final year collaborative university project in a team of 5.

Norsevar was developed in Unity. I was mainly responsible for the Combat Mechanics and Systems. I was also working as the Scrum Master of our team. Since some of the visual assets used in the game are paid assets, I cannot provide a link to the repository. However, I've documented my work on this project in detail in a Mahara portolio, which you can access below. If you're interested in playing the game, I've also included a link to a demo of Norsevar.

Beyond this side is a Point and Click adventure game about a man trying to find out what happened to his wife who mysteriously disappeared. The game features a compelling story with several puzzles to solve.

During my internship at Carbon Fire Studio, I was tasked with adding gamepad support to this game, to make it work on both consoles (Switch, Xbox, Playstation) and on the PC using a gamepad. This required me to develop systems that allow players to seamlessly tranisiton between Mouse and Gamepad mode, and make both common Point and Click mechanics and the over 30 puzzle mini-games work correctly, without changing major parts of the existing codebase (since the game was still being developed). To achieve this, I developed a Gamepad Selection system that allows me to easily set selectable elements in the scene, which the player can then switch between. The system uses simple events to notify other scripts when an item is selected, deselected, activated or deativated. I also developed a UI button prompt system, which automatically displays button prompts based on the controls used in the current context. This system also uses the existing localization system to display the prompts in the correct language.

In Color Jump, you play in a team of 2, one Red and one Blue character. Characters can only collide with platforms of their color or white platforms. Some platforms change their color to the color of the character that collides with them. The goal of Color Jump is for your team to complete the obstacle course and reach the end platform before any other team. The level features some tricky puzzles that require you and your team mate to carefully think about your moves.

Color Jump was developed in a team of two in C++ using the SFML library. The game uses TCP for state synchronization. There are two versions of this game, a local-coop and LAN-coop version.

Protect the Heart is an arcade shooter, in which the player drags his weak spot (his heart) behind him on a leash. The goal of the game is to protect your own heart while destroying the heart of your opponents. The heart is the only spot where damage can be dealt to a player. Once a player dies, his round is over. The round ends, when only one player is left. The player who has the most kills after 5 rounds, wins the game. Every player has a dash ability that can be used to dodge enemy bullets. Randomly spawned upgrades can be used to improve the player's weapon or dash ability or to gain a random passive effect.

Protect the Heart was developed in Unity. I was mainly working on the input system and the particle effects.

Blogic is a 3D puzzle game that I developed in a team of 5 developers for a 5th semester university project. In this sugar-themed cuboid puzzle game, the player controls a sugar cube that can be moved on a 3-dimensional grid, through an environment created out of chocolate pieces, filled with all sorts of dangers, like coffee drops that dissolve you on touch. The player is not an ordinary sugar cube though. He has the ability to attach other brown-sugar-cubes to him and move with them. This allows the player to reach higher places on the grid, overcome gaps, open up or block passages and complete levels in the quest to get him to safety. While navigating through the chocolate filled world, the player is constantly “chased” by the slowly rising coffee level, which threatens to dissolve him. The player’s goal is to reach the safe sugar box at the end of the level, before he gets drowned by the coffee.

Blogic was developed using the MonoGame framework. I was working as a Programmer and Level Designer on this game. You can read the Game Design Document for this game here.

Driftonaut is a 3D puzzle game that I developed in a team of 4 developers during a 12 week internship at EduGamiTec, an education technology start-up and developers of MemoMoti. In Driftonaut, the player takes control of an Astronaut that is stranded on some neatly placed asteroids and he needs to find his way back to his spaceship. To do so, he needs to solve a puzzle. On the grid-based map of the game, each tile has a behaviour, for example empty tiles slide the player forward, while walkable tiles allow the player to choose his direction. The player now needs to find the right path to reach the tile his spaceship is stranded on. Driftonaut is meant to be a showcase game for the MemoMoti platform, which we integrated into our puzzles.

Driftonaut was developed in Unity. I was working as a Programmer on this game.

Dwarf Miner is a 2D endless runner that I developed in a team of 4 developers during a 12 week internship at EduGamiTec, an education technology start-up and developers of MemoMoti. In Dwarf Miner, the player's goal is to safely lead a miner in his minecart through his mine. On his path, he regularly comes across deep gaps. To not fall down the gaps, the player needs to close them by building bridges with bridge parts. For each bridge part needed, the player gets asked a question, which needs to be answered by choosing the bridge part with the right answer to close the gap. The game also features power-ups and extra lives.

Dwarf Miner was developed in Unity. I was working as a Programmer on this game.

Cake Rage was the third game I worked on during my internship at EduGamiTec, an education technology start-up and developers of MemoMoti. In Cake Rage, the player takes control of a cake that always follows his mouse cursor. The player moves through an open map and collects candy to grow bigger and receive points, which is the goal of this game. Besides candy, the player can also eat enemies that are smaller than himself. However, he needs to watch out for bigger enemies, as they try to chase him down and eat him.

Cake Rage was developed in Unity. I was mainly responsible for the Enemy AIs (detection, state machine and debug visualization) and the Main Menu and HUD implementation. Sadly we weren't able to finish the game, due to some issues with the previous games, that needed our attention. Therefore, I sadly can't provide a demo for you to play.

Quickshot VR is a virtual reality action endless runner, which I developed with 3 classmates for a 10 week group project assignment. In Quick Shot VR, you are trying to take down a seemingly never-ending number of enemies but in the most action-packed and epic way possible, dodging enemy bullets, all just to get the perfect combo. The game is inspired by the VR game Pistol Whip.

Quickshot VR was developed in Unity. I was working as a Programmer on this game and was mainly responsible for the weapons, enemies and UI.

Toggl is a 2D puzzle platformer that I developed together with two friends for the Geta Game Jam 9. The theme of the Jam was "Contrasting Elements". Toggl has 10 uniquely designed levels. The objective of each level is to get to the red finish platform by toggling between 2 modes that each reveal and hide platforms.

Toggl was developed in Unity. I was mainly responsible for the level design and the character movement.

Angry Comet is a 2D casual arcade game for mobile devices, that I developed for the 3th semester individual projects. In this game, the player controls an angry little comet, that he can shoot at surrounding planets to earn points. Among the normal planets, the player will also encounter special enemy planets that are out to kill him.

Angry Comet was developed in Unity. Except for the planet art and the sounds and music, I developed this game on my own.

Bedtime is Deadtime was developed for the 72 hour long Geta Game Jam 8 by a team of 5 people. The theme of the Jam was "Dreams and Nightmares". The objective of the game is to fend off hordes of monsters, trying to reach you in your sleep, by pointing your flashlight at them to dispel them. The player loses sanity for each enemy that reaches the bed.

Bedtime is Deadtime was developed in Unity. I was mainly responsible for the lighting effects and some of the enemy behaviors.

Rift Runners is an Arcade Machine that I developed and built with my group for a 2nd semester group project. The game is 2D multiplayer competitive endless runner, inspired by the games SpeedRunners and Smash Bros. The objective of the game is simply to survive as long as possible, while trying to kick your opponents out of the game. It features many items that can be used to accomplish this, like ranged weapons that shoot projectiles (pistol, sniper, ...) or melee weapons (sword, hammer, ...). We also implemented some consumable items, that would have an effect on all the players, for example an item that would invert the controls. The Arcade machine itself was 2-sided and had 3 buttons and a joystick per player.

The game was developed in Unity and the Arcade itself was designed in Autodesk Fusion. I was mainly responsible for the multiplayer functionality, the character selection and the in-game UI. I also designed the Arcade machine.

Geography Party Deluxe was developed in a group of 5 people for the BTS-PowerWeek in the first semester of the curriculum. We were given 5 days to develop an educational game about luxembourgish geography. Additionally, we were given the task to create a short trailer and a flyer for our game We decided to make a 4-player Mario Party style game, with some interesting educational mini-games and 4 historical luxembourgish characters. Sadly, we only had time to implement one mini-game (a Trivia game) and the actual board. The game is missing a main menu and can only be played in 4-player mode, so it is more an early prototype than a finished product.

The game was developed in Unreal Engine. In this project, I was mainly responsible for the Trivia mini-game implementation.