Alex Crane Portfolio
Hackathon Projects
Alex has participated in over a dozen different hackathons and game jams, as a contributor, solo dev, team dev, and organizer/community leader. Since 2020, he has also been the sole regional organizer for the Midwest for the Global Game Jam (overseeing 18 states), and was nominated for this role due to his tenure running the event.
Boneless Knight
Completed in 48 hours for the 2024 Global Game Jam, Boneless Knight was an intentional challenge taken to make an active ragdoll game in that time frame, which was a great learning experience. Over those 48 hours, Alex managed to complete the ragdoll configuration, its force-based-movement, a modular dialogue system, a cutscene system using that dialogue system, enemy destruction, and a win condition.
This was particularly challenging, not just because of the subject being new, but also because the version of Unity used had a bug with the Angular Drives for ragdolls being unable to be modified at runtime. Tracking down this bug and working around it was a big part of this project.
Mycopia
Completed in 48 hours for the Global Game Jam 2023, Mycopia is a "city-building" sim where it is your responsibility to build new mushroom colonies and make sure their mycelium network underground is connected to valuable resources. However, giant (to you) rabbits are coming to plunder your cities. You must defend them with all you have by shooting spores at them.
Play: https://axelancer.itch.io/mycopia
Speakeasy Tycoon
Completed in 48 hours for the Amber Jam event, Speakeasy Tycoon is a top-down isometric simulation game, where you're in charge of creating a production and distribution network for alcohol during prohibition in 1920s America.
Participated as a managing member of MidCoast Game Developers (now Amber Waves of Games), we partnered with other Midwest game development organizations for this event, including Flyover Indies and KC Video Game Developers.
Keep the Party Alive
Ranked Top 10% Worldwide in Theme and Humor Categories
Completed in 48 hours as a solo project for the Ludum Dare 46 event, Keep The Party Alive is a short but hectic single player game, where you play as the host of a party trying to satisfy everyone's needs while keeping party hype up.
This game features a hype-management system, as well as a random-needs-assignment system that keeps the game fun without being too difficult, assigning needs to partygoers that the player has to fulfill to maximize hype.
Play: https://axelancer.itch.io/keep-the-party-alive
Jam page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/keep-the-party-alive-4
Temptris
Ranked Top 1% Worldwide in Innovation Category
Created in 48 hours for the Ludum Dare 45 event. Temptris is a Tetris-inspired roguelike game, made in the Gameboy Color style with "programmer art".
An evil sorceress, the Temptris, sends random dungeon rooms hurtling your way, and it is up to you to rotate and move them so that they build a dungeon.
Once your dungeon has reached all the way to her, the gameplay shifts to a dungeon crawl, and you have a limited amount of time to traverse it and make it to her.
Download: https://axelancer.itch.io/temptris
The Bigger You
Winner of "Best Game Award"
2nd Place Overall
Created in 36 hours for Hack KU 2019, a Major League Hacking event. This project was made using the Microsoft Hololens, utilizing its depth camera to scan the user's room and populate it with a random cityscape. By snapping to the detected ground plane, buildings pop up on top of couches, tables, and on the floor.
The player takes the role of a giant monster and can walk through the city and destroy buildings. Alex was the lead programmer for this project. During this event Alex also held a workshop for ACM to teach attendees the basics of game engines.
Jam page: https://devpost.com/software/the-bigger-you
Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Fq4ykJWsl0
Introvertical
Created in 48 hours for the Global Game Jam 2019, this game centers around an introverted robot. For this robot, home is a place to (literally) recharge and recover from the outside world, where day to day interactions can be draining. Alex was a designer and the lead programmer for this project, as well as the main organizer for the jam site.
Play: https://axelancer.itch.io/introvertical
Jam page: https://globalgamejam.org/2019/games/introvertical