Off Limits is a first person multiplayer shooter that features classic team-based territorial control gameplay with a unique twist. The game revolves around two teams capturing the enemy territory by hunting down and killing their main player, the Juggernaut. Defeating this heavily armoured, minigun-wielding character is the only way to advance the frontline.

While I had experimented with game development before, Off Limits was my first big game development project. In college, online gaming was one of my hobbies. When Half-Life 2 was first announced, me and three friends sat together and decided we should build a mod for it. We had some brainstorming sessions on the core concept, and started developing.

The game took 8 years to complete and a lot has happened since that brainstorming session, both gameplay and visual assets have changed several times. We had to deal with an initial delay (HL2) of a year, and with several breaking SDK updates. Dozens of people have contributed at some point to some version of Off Limits, but in the end development was carried by only two people, me and Wesley Tack, and only in our spare time. In retrospect, while it may have been overly ambitious, we made a decent, retail-quality game with a very small team and learned a lot during the process.

Totems is a 3D action adventure platformer for the Xbox360 and PC. The player controls the main character, Gia, using parkour style movements and mystical powers to traverse the world and fight off enemies. Totems has an art direction influenced by shamanist culture and features impressive free running animations and combat moves, for the player as well as the AI enemies.

In 2006 I got contacted by 10tacle Studios' CEO Yves Grolet to join his team as a full time employee. At my first visit I was amazed by the quality of both the artists and software engineers and saw the potential of Totems and the in-house developed engine NeoReality 2, so I was quickly convinced. I worked there for two years on several systems, in both the gameplay team & core tech team, with the pathfinding and enemy AI as my biggest contributions.

While the project came to an abrupt end in 2008 with 10tacle's closure and the potential of Totems was never realised, it remains one of my best work experiences to date. Development was very well organised using Scrum Agile methodology, and I enjoyed both the professional work ethic and fun atmosphere in the teams. I got the chance to work on some very cutting edge features and to work with some very talented people ( and frag them at lunch as an added bonus :) ).

Hyperion is my own game development framework built on top of XNA. Its main purpose is to serve as my personal playing ground, allowing me to implement algorithms just for the heck of it or to develop and refine features I can re-use in several games.

After 10tacle Studios closed down, I became a business software developer for several reasons. But the urge to implement complexer systems and be more creative soon popped up again and needed an outlet. That's when I started work on Hyperion: my own game development experimentation lab. I chose XNA as my base technology - a choice I haven't regretted since: while C++ development is more challenging and gives you more low level power, my most scarce resource is time, and the development speed and ease of C# as a managed language, XNA and .NET are undeniable.

Hyperion served its purpose well. I built a deferred & forward graphics engine, hierarchical component-based system, an real-time editor, a modular and reusable input system, some nice graphics features like atmospheric scattering, integrated jiglibX, designed a multi-platform and multi-project solution layout, etc. It supports 2D and 3D games on PC, Xbox360 and Windows Phone 7 and many of the systems can easily be ported to other platforms & languages. In its current state, Hyperion would be a great starting point for eg a mobile game development factory (one of the things I'm actually considering).

Fighters Uncaged is an unique and gritty tournament style fighting game exclusive for Xbox 360 that delivers 100% controller-free action via the body mapping and motion capture capabilities of Microsoft Kinect. The game features 70 real martial arts move -- including punches, kicks, defensive actions and more -- that the player instantly triggers in-game against opponents by performing the actual move in front of the Kinect sensor. Additional features include intense combo possibilities, special voice activated moves, over-the-top opponents and multiplayer support, including co-op and online leaderboard functionality on Xbox LIVE.

In 2009 Yves Grolet, former CEO of 10tacle Studios Belgium, was starting up a new game development company. His first project was Fighters Uncaged, a game he developed for Ubisoft. He contacted me to help out with the studio startup. I decided to start as a freelance developer next to my regular dayjob and worked together with Yves and his team for about a year.

It was a really interesting experience starting up a studio from scratch. I helped setting up the production pipeline, and started development on the engine with an HDR graphics pipeline, material system, integration of several libraries and some advanced lighting mechanisms. I did not work on the motion sensing code itself, that was taken care of by the guys at Fishing Cactus. After a year, Yves' internal team had grown and was ready to take over. They finished the game half a year later, and it is now available for purchase.

Having been a part of several large scale game development projects, I felt it was time for a change. With the advent of smartphones, mobile games were on the rise (and will be so for years to come). I decided to have a go at mobile game development, looking for projects that are smaller scale than what I was used to, but in which my contribution would be relatively bigger. As a plus, on mobile markets you can publish your own games, which motivates all the more to make great games.

Windows Phone 7 as a mobile game platform was an obvious choice for me. It uses XNA for game development, was a few months away, and a powerful enough platform to create interesting 2D and 3D games on. I started specializing in XNA game development specifically for Phone 7 and have since released several games on the platform. I've been asked as a keynote speaker on Microsoft Belgium's ReMIX event in 2010 and have written and taught a two-day course on game development for Windows Phone 7 at the Microsoft Innovation Center in Mons.

Shift is an original 2D puzzle platformer in which the player navigates the character through black and white levels trying to reach the exit. The player has the ability to "shift" the world, turning it upside-down and allowing the character to run in the decor. Mixed with booby traps, extra puzzle gameplay elements and a good dose of humor, this makes for a fun and challenging puzzle experience.

NAVIGATOR is a 2D block puzzle game with platformer elements. The gameplay can be compared to a crossover between an upside-down Bust-a-Move with elements from Tetris Plus. Next to the classic puzzle element you also control a character that moves around on the playing field, trying to keep him safe from harm. NAVIGATOR is developed in XNA with PC, Xbox360 and Windows Phone 7 as target platforms, and will be ported to iPhone as well.

I stumbled upon NAVIGATOR through a help wanted request on the XNA forums. Tyvon J. Thomas, founder of the PixelxCore community, looked for a programmer to implement his design. The concept looked interesting and the artwork was decent. At the time I was looking to do a smaller 2D game that could be developed in under six months for mobile platforms, and I hadn't done a puzzle game yet so I offered to take care of the technical part.

Cooperation with Tyvon has been great. PixelxCore is a young community of pixel artists and their enthusiasm is infectuous. Tyvon knows the genre very well, documents his designs properly and is very productive as pixel artist. We're taking an iterative approach to development with a lot of playtesting and this works out well.

NAVIGATOR is still in production now, and looks very promising.

Orion Wars is a classical 2D topdown arcade shooter where you control a small fighter fending off waves of enemies & engaging bosses. It's main differentiator will be a very high quality, colourful art direction. Orion Wars is targeted at mobile platforms, primarily iPhone and iPad.

I got contacted by Samuel Justice, who'd done some audio for Off Limits before, to develop a 2D iPhone game. The concept is simple and uses tried and proven gameplay mechanics, but the concept art David Shearer whipped up holds a lot of promise. While I focused on Phone 7 before, this is an ideal chance to dive into iOS development & broaden my target market.