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PORTFOLIO
Matthew Johannes
Game Designer | Pixel Artist | Composer
B I O
I am a Michigan-based indie game designer who loves all facets of game design—concept and story development, world building, character design, strategy, game balance, art and animation, and soundtrack composition. Entering my junior year as a Game Design student, game design capitalizes on all my obsessive interests. Each evening, I spend hours working on game development, chatting with fellow creatives and gamers, and composing orchestrations. Chasing new ideas and fine-tuning old ones brings me endless satisfaction. I never get bored, and it never gets old.
P R O J E C T S
Dine and Dash is a roguelike set inside a fast food restaurant. The player must fight their way through waves of employees to attempt to escape with a free meal. I started this game as my senior capstone project, and loved it so much, I've continued developing it and am working toward its release. Created as a solo project, all art, music, programming, and assets were made by me.
Timeline: 2024 - Present
Award: Excellence in Multimedia, CSI magnet program
Engine and software: Unity, Aesprite, Musescore, Audacity
TRAILER
SCREENSHOTS
1/6
ANIMATIONS
Player Animations
Enemy Animations
Effect Animations
TILE SETS & ENVIRONMENT ASSETS
Diner tile set
Kitchen tile set
Playplace tile set
Castle tile set
Outside tile set
Time's Up is a turn-based roguelike I developed for the 2025 EGaDS! Texas Game Jam. The game features 60 waves, 10 unique enemy types, and 11 unique power ups. Inspired by Wii Play: Tanks!, the music adapts to the enemies currently on the board by adding a new layer to the score for each different enemy type as they appear.
This game was a super fun experience to make. Having just 48 hours in a weekend to do it allowed me to see how I work under pressure and to practice time management. I enjoyed creating an entire game in such a short time span.
Timeline: September 2025
Theme: Out of Time
Awards: Judge's Choice, 3rd Place People's Choice Winner
Engine and software: Unity, Aesprite, Musescore, Reaper, Audacity
SCREENSHOTS
1/5
CHARACTER SPRITES
TRAILER
Spawning Animation
BACKGROUND ART
POWER UP ICONS
Duality is a Pokemon fan game that I began in my 8th grade Computer Science class, then continued to develop over three more school years and three summers. The project has over 24-hours of gameplay, 250+ unique creatures, 46 playable areas, and an 80-song soundtrack. While it is a fan game inspired by my love of RPGs, only original creature designs were included. I managed and developed this project with a team of two friends. One friend created most of the overworld buildings and the other designed the human characters that I then translated into pixel art. As the design lead, I did the scripting, environment art, creature designs, level design, and music.
Timeline: 2019 - 2023
Engine and software: RPG Maker, Aseprite, Audacity, Musescore
TRAILER
SCREENSHOTS
1/6
TILE SETS
General outside tile set
Snowy outside tile set
Crater tile set
Caves tile set
S O F T W A R E S K I L L S
GAME ENGINES
Unity
Unreal
SOFTWARE
Aseprite
Maya
Cinema 4D
MuseScore
Reaper
Audacity
RPG Maker
ADOBE CREATIVE SUITE
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe InDesign
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe Audition
O T H E R I N T E R E S T S
Dungeons & Dragons
Bass Guitar
Electric Guitar
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