Portfolio.exe

When COVID-19 happened, I was stuck in my apartment with too much time on my hands.
One night, I came across Bruno Simon's portfolio ↗. He built a game where users could drive a car to navigate through his work.
It was delightfully refreshing, and as an entry level designer at the time, his work encouraged me to go down the path of a hybrid designer / engineer.
His work was open source, but I wanted to create something unique. The inner child in me had always wanted to make a video game.
I used Matter.js ↗ as the physics engine. I learned a lot about game loops, collision detection, vector math, and sprite rendering.
Turns out games run on two layers. There's an invisible physics layer that handles all the collisions, and a visual layer on top with all the textures you actually see. Play with the sandbox here:
I even had to use sine and cosine to animate objects smoothly. A bit poetic, given I always asked my math teachers when I'd ever use this.
You can try it out below but note that the showcased work is mostly from when I was in college.
Click here to Play
W
A
S
Move
D
O
Dash
P
Punch
L
Restart
Jump
Game not available on mobile
I remember being so proud that this became my primary portfolio. But I quickly learned that asking hiring managers to navigate a game just to view my work wasn't a great experience.
It works for someone like Bruno, who's showcasing game design, but for UX work, simple and scannable wins.