Aaron Gill
Bio
Aaron Gill is a game designer and programmer with a primary focus in Unity gameplay programming.Aaron is currently pursuing his BFA in Game design at NYU, where he has worked on a multiple projects both cooperatively and as a solo creator.From an early age, Aaron has dedicated his free time to improving his skills as an autodidact in the programming world.He has a passion for games and spends his time studying the craft of various designers through gameplay and learning from their technical and creative choices.
Education
NYU Tisch BFA in Game Design 2025
Awards
#1 Game in HackNYU Mini Hackathon 2023
Dirty Work
Clean up messes, fight dirt monsters and go against the main antagonist: Stain!
Chapter One releases to Steam in 2025- Programmer, Game Designer
Terratrials
NEW INFORMATION: TIME IS CURRENCY.OBJECTIVE: SURVIVE.Stranded in a sentient outpost trying to destroy you in any way it can, this chaotic dodge-'em-up will require your peak performance in order to advance!- Programmer, Game Designer
Rush Hour Anxiety
An award winning survival game about a typical NYU Student's experience on the subway.- Programmer, Game Designer
Undertrader
A comical Undertale inspired RPG set in Trader Joes where the player wakes up after being hit by a truck.- Co-Programmer, Level Designer, Combat Designer
Parking Spot!
A game about getting your parking spot despite anything, or anyone, in your way.- Game Designer, Programmer
Anarchist Simulator
A squad based RPG inspired by Oubliette, where the player controls a group of anarchists spreading anarchist ideology by conversating, propagandizing and bombings!- Game Designer, Programmer
Malaria Clinic Simulator
A dark yet humorous game where the player runs and guides their failing hospital to success by infecting members of the public to treat them later.- Game Designer, Programmer, Level Designer
BODY
A surreal journey through the human body using a disturbingly long finger.- Head Programmer, Level Designer
Galactic Trading Empire
Take the role of a spaceship pilot, delivering materials to cities from the central factory.- Game Designer, Programmer
Box Ghost
A puzzle game inspired by Portal where the player uses the physics system and their cannon to solve puzzles.- Programmer, Puzzle Designer, Artist
BODY
A strange experience about digging into your nose.Sole Programmer and level designer in a team of 5.Designed and implemented levels and programmed smooth player movement.As a programmer, I focused on utilizing the control scheme which felt as if the player is moving their own hand deeper into the BODY by creating an disturbing yet intriguing parallel between the movement of the mouse and the movement of the hand in game.As a level designer, I was able to then create levels which focused used these controls to their fullest extent where the player has to work to move their own hand over and over, deeper into the BODY, ensuring a mental connection between the player's physical BODY and the virtual BODY with each twist and turn needed to progress.
5 Members
Unity 2D
Available on Itch.io
Terratrials
A high energy & hectic dodge-'em-up where the player is stuck in an outpost that has been taken over by the Lovecraftian horror that is both flesh and machine. Survive for as long as possible in order to get to the core of the fleshy horror.
Here, time is currency and is only gained by beating your high score for a level.Unable to attack back, the player must dodge and run away from the various enemies that appear in each level. Their only respites are the abilities they purchase from the store and what ever peace their own skills will afford them.This was a project made for a class with 7 other people, mainly artists. I was the only programmer and thus worked incredibly closely with rest of the team to create our vision as well as having my own significant control over the game design itself during our iterative process.Although our team is no longer working on this, the project currently represents a great vertical slice with 7 levels present. I was able to find my footing and know what I was capable of during this period.
7 Members
Unity 2D
Available on Itch.io
Dirty Work
A chaotic twin-stick bullet hell where the player cleans up messes with their water gun in order to fight the main antagonist, Stain!With incredibly satisfying movement and cleanup mechanics, this game shows a lot of promise and will provide hours of fun once fully released.Although not an original member for the original project, I was brought on as a programmer to help push progress further. So far my work includes some rather important bug fixes, iteration on boss mechanics, as well as prototyping for enemies.Notably, our team showed this game off at PlayNYC 2024, which was part of AnimeNYC 2024. Overall the convention had over 100K guests, which is an unbelievably huge achievement!Soon this title will be available on Steam, however an Itch build is currently available to play, and gives around 30 minutes of gameplay.The first chapter of the full game should release sometime around 2025!
Undertrader
A quirky Undertale like RPG about escaping from a Trader Joe's. Has combat elements, lots of humor, and overworld puzzles to enjoy!Co-Programmer, Combat DesignerProgrammed dialogue system, combat system, character interactions, and event triggersFor this, I worked with my co-programmer and created a custom system where the dialogue tree may be easily implemented with the use of Unity's UI Toolkit in order to create a simple script that would smooth out the implementation of dialogue for our narrative designers. Along with being used for dialogue, this system could add items to the player's inventory and allow other dialogue trees or events to become activated.Outside of this, I worked on the movement, enemy attacks pictured above, scene management between combat scenes and overworld scenes as well as feedback to player choices in combat.As a combat designer, the player's choices in combat and the ability to either spare an enemy or kill them was a focal point in our game. Therefore it was an instrumental part of the game for feedback to the player's choices to be present. This can be seen in the process of finding an enemy's weakness if acting on them or attacking at the right time, and when the fight is over, seeing that they are potentially missing or have had a change of heart in their dialogue with the player. This is all of course in conjunction with the item system present and the ability to heal and freely strategize in battles.
5 Members
Unity 2D
Available on Itch.io
Malaria Clinic Simulator
A humorous game about being a hospital director, going to the hospital to take care of patients and going out to make new patients using unethical methods. With a dirty needle, infected tissues, poxgun and the 1994 Pox-Mobile, infect new people.Sole game designer and programmerDesigned entire gameplay loop, programmed all interactions, designed all levels.
Solo Project
Unity 3D
Unreleased
The Galactic Delivery Empire
A small solo project with the aim of delivering goods from a central factory to different cities around the world. Originally with the concept of trading goods, which I then turned into a demo for a game which I have hopes to turn into a small multiplayer game.Sole game designer and programmerDesigned entire gameplay loop, programmed all interactions, designed all levels.
Solo Project
GameMaker
Demo
Box Ghost!
A puzzle game inspired by portal, which was made for my Intermediate Game Development class. This is one of the only projects in which I designed all art assetsSolo project.
Solo Project
Unity 2D
Released
Anarchist Simulator
An squad management RPG game inspired by Oubliette (1983) and Liberal Crime Squad (2002). The player manages a squad of anarchists in the early 1900s. Players work jobs to buy materials to spread anarchism through conversing with the local populace and bombing politician's houses.This is still being developed over time.Sole game designer, UI/UX designer, and programmerThe game's main progression is done entirely through the UI to plan out actions, as well as control character choices. This was a new experience to me so the planning of player actions and the flow of gameplay in terms of menus and ease of use, while of course placing player enjoyment at the forefront is definitely a skill I am becoming more comfortable with.
Solo Project
Unity 2D
Released
Rush Hour Anxiety
A humorous game made in 6 hours with an extra 3 hours for polishing for HackNYU Mini Hackathon 2023.A short game where the player is trying to finish their quiz that consists of various trivia questions before they get to their destination, 8th street NYU. However, the people on the train are to bother you. They are staring at you, at your phone, and occasionally trying to grab your phone from your hand. You as the player must answer all questions while fending off from these strangers by smacking their hand or closing your phone.Co-programmer and designer.Collaborated to design core gameplay loop
Formulated button interactions, NPC behavior, and general code structuring.As a part of this team, I helped develop a mechanically interesting system which provides the player with tons of enjoyment as they see the effect of their actions on the game and NPCs from a simple set of actions presented to them. Notably, when slapping away the hands of the antagonists, they become disgusted and leave after reaching to the next stop. This leads to situations where, depending on their actions, the player may have both antagonists attempting to attack the player, or where the player is constantly vigilant for when a possible enemy may come back while being forced to simultaneously focus on their test to win the game.
4 Person Project
Unity 2D
Released
Parking Spot!
A game based on my childhood memory of my father pushing a car out of his way to get a parking spot on the street.Solo ProjectMade as a prototype and expanded to be a small minute long experience.For this, I rapidly prototyped the game in a single 8 hour span to create the core loop and a playable product with some elements of feedback to make the game enjoyable. I later came back to this project and worked on it for around three days focusing on adding more player feedback and polish in existing mechanics in the form of juice and responsiveness. This was mainly in the form of sound in response to player interactions, expanded particle systems, and some additional beautifying to the UI and camera.
Solo Project
Unity 3D
Released