Making gamesfor education, research and culture

by a programmer who designs and teaches

I help universities, museums and researchers turn their ideas into games, from prototype to release. I look for what's naturally fun in the subject itself, then build around that.

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Selected work

Cardiff University - School of Journalism, Media and Culture

ViewfindR

A filmmaking simulator where students practise framing, lighting and shot composition.

“His approach displayed an excellent command of the various facets of the process and an impressive skill in articulating a viable sequence of intermediary steps. He reported regularly, met every milestone and delivered a product with all the desired features. No ifs and buts - he does a brilliant job.”
Savyasaachi Jain - project lead, Cardiff University

Students practice in a sandbox that detects whether a shot is a close-up or a wide shot, and whether it follows the rule of thirds, then teachers assess the results separately. It's in active use on the course.

The biggest challenge was making it feel accessible to people who'd never played a game before, while keeping the depth needed to simulate real filmmaking - moving as much as possible from keyboard controls to mouse-based input. Getting that right meant designing a solution, testing it with real users, and iterating until it worked.

Echo Games CIC - for five museums in and around Bath

Built from Beneath

A digital escape room where players travel back in time, solving puzzles woven from the city's history.

“Geoffrey proved himself an exceptionally competent developer, producing professional standard code that exceeded our expectations. He was punctual, clear in communicating issues, and sustained a professional codebase and developer practice.”
Dr Daniel J. Finnegan - client, Echo Games CIC

Players solve puzzles to learn about the brighter and darker sides of Bath's history, including how the efforts of both the wealthy and working class shaped the city into what it is today.

I was brought in as the Unity developer. With five organisations collaborating, finding the right puzzles meant testing a range of mechanical prototypes before settling on what suited the story. I built custom editor tooling to implement the selected puzzles quickly, keeping them intuitive and tactile for a museum touchscreen.

Echo Games CIC - with Great Ormond Street Hospital

T Cell Titans

A shooter game that puts players in command of the body's immune response against cancer.

“He quickly understood my inputs and translated them into the game. He communicated effectively and was always willing to work on all the little visual adjustments I asked for, sometimes even predicting them. He is professional, organised, attentive, and his enthusiasm for game development is contagious.”
Daniela De Angeli - lead artist, Echo Games CIC

Co-designed with the young patients themselves, it depicts real T-cell therapy immune responses, supporting conversations between healthcare practitioners and children with leukaemia.

Making a game for children meant paying extra attention to intuitive, satisfying interaction - game feel was the focus, keeping the actions full of life while staying accurate to the underlying research. I drew on the experience design I'd built up on Supersolid's mobile games, using tweening and particle effects to make the interactions pop.

University of Bath - with NT Bath Assembly Rooms

A Regency Scandal

A ball turns into a murder mystery where players and spectators solve puzzles together.

The study explored how visitors move from passively watching an exhibit to actively taking part - drifting between watching and playing as they choose.

My job was to connect three puzzle mechanics into a single meta-game, feeding clues from each puzzle into one shared murder mystery so spectators could follow along without playing themselves. I designed it to be genuinely fun to play while giving the study a reliable way to measure visitor behaviour. It ran as a pilot and wrapped once the research was complete.

About

I'm a gameplay programmer and educator based in London. I help universities, museums and cultural organisations make games that draw out the fun already in learning something new.

I've shipped games and kept them running once real players depend on them - I think as much about what happens after launch as before it. Teaching keeps me close to the people on the other end of a project too - not developers, but the ones who need to understand what's being built, and why.

Get in touch

Want to build an engaging experience or test an idea out? Get in touch - let's figure out together how to make it happen. We'll start with a quick call, then I'll give you a clear, fixed quote.

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