Track Resources — Game Development

Game design · Game programming

Market context

Read the 2026 Industry Skills Report first. The short version for this track: the market is difficult, studios expect even junior candidates to show strong portfolios and evidence of shipped or completed project work, and the candidate paradox is real — you need experience to get hired and a job to get experience.

The way out of that paradox is the same as it has always been: ship something small and finish it. A completed, polished 10-minute game beats an unfinished ambitious one, every time, for every hiring manager.

Engine reality: Unreal ~42% adoption, Unity ~30%, Godot ~11% among newer indie teams. Larger studios skew Unreal (47–59% at AA/AAA). PC leads forward planning at 73% of executives; Steam Deck is fourth in active development at 28%.

Game programming

What the job asks for

Hiring guidance draws a hard line between two profiles:

Blueprint-capable developers handle gameplay logic, AI behavior trees, UI, rapid prototyping, and content pipeline scripting — but cannot do engine customization or multiplayer netcode.

C++ developers need real depth: the UObject hierarchy, UCLASS and UPROPERTY macros, the garbage collector, the tick system, and the replication framework.

The screening question that separates them: can you expose a C++ class to Blueprints so a designer can set properties without touching code? If you can answer that with a working example, you are in a different pile.

Technical evidence that gets you interviews

• Gameplay Ability System — production-level implementation. Widely requested, rarely demonstrated by juniors.
• Multiplayer replication — even a small authoritative-server prototype
• World Partition and streaming architecture
• Editor tooling and custom plugins — build something that makes a designer's life easier
• AI behavior trees and state trees
• Performance profiling and optimization — with real numbers
• Data structures, algorithms, and memory management fundamentals — technical interviews still test these

Learning resources

• Epic Developer Community (dev.epicgames.com/community) — free official C++ and gameplay learning paths
• Unreal Engine C++ documentation — the Gameplay Framework and GAS sections
• Tom Looman (tomlooman.com) — the best free Unreal C++ material available; his course syllabus alone is a curriculum
• Ari Arnbjörnsson / Unreal Engine official YouTube — free official instruction
• GameDev.tv, Udemy Unreal C++ courses — cheap and structured; frequently on sale
• Game Programming Patterns (gameprogrammingpatterns.com) — free online, Robert Nystrom. Read it.
• Handmade Hero (handmadehero.org) — free, from-scratch engine programming
• Casey Muratori, Jonathan Blow talks — systems thinking
• Unity Learn (learn.unity.com) — free official C# and gameplay paths
• Godot documentation and GDQuest (gdquest.com) — free, high quality
• Catlike Coding (catlikecoding.com) — deep free Unity tutorials
• LeetCode / HackerRank — for the algorithm portion of technical interviews

Portfolio standard

• A playable build. Downloadable, launchable, on itch.io. Nothing substitutes for this.
• Source on GitHub with a README explaining the architecture
• A technical writeup per system — the problem, your approach, what you'd change
• Video walkthrough for anything that takes more than a minute to reach in-game
• Profiling evidence where relevant
• Clear statement of what you wrote versus what came from a template or asset pack

Game design

What the job asks for

Design roles are the hardest entry point in the industry because the skill is difficult to demonstrate and everyone thinks they have it. The candidates who break through show systems that work, not documents that describe systems.

Core

• Systems design with data-driven tuning — spreadsheets, curves, balance passes
• Level design: pacing, sightlines, affordance, player guidance
• Encounter and combat design
• Playtesting methodology and documented iteration on observed data
• Prototyping ability — Blueprint, GDScript, C#, or visual scripting. You must be able to build it yourself.
• Clear technical writing

Software: Unreal or Unity, a 3D package for blockout, spreadsheets (genuinely), Miro or similar, version control.

Learning resources

• The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses, Jesse Schell — the standard text
• Game Design Workshop, Tracy Fullerton — the standard course text; prototyping-driven
• Level Design Lobby podcast and resources
• Boss Keys (Mark Brown, YouTube) and Game Maker's Toolkit — free, analytical, excellent
• GDC Vault — hundreds of free design talks; the level design and systems tracks especially
• World of Level Design (worldofleveldesign.com) — free tutorials
• Steve Lee (YouTube) — professional level design instruction, free
• Book of Lenses card deck — a genuinely useful working tool
• Unreal / Unity level design documentation and sample projects — Epic's Lyra sample is a full production reference
• Game jams — itch.io hosts constantly; Global Game Jam annually. This is where designers get evidence.

Portfolio standard

Design portfolios are case studies, not documents.

For each piece:

1. The design problem and constraints
2. Your process — sketches, blockouts, iterations, what you tried and discarded
3. The playable result — build or video
4. Playtest data — what you observed, what changed as a result. This is the single strongest signal a design portfolio can carry, and it is rare.
5. What you'd change

Include: one complete level or encounter with the full process shown · one systems design with real tuning data · a game jam entry that shipped · analytical breakdowns of existing games (shows you can articulate why something works)

Exclude: unimplemented design documents for imaginary AAA games. Every design hiring manager has seen a thousand of these and they signal nothing.

Project ideas that map to hiring

Project 1 — Deconstruction
Recreate faithfully, or in your own style. See the Project 1 page for this track's curated source list:

• Programming: reimplement a named gameplay system from a shipped game based on its observed behavior — a traversal system, a combat state machine, an inventory model. Document your hypothesis, then test it.
• Design: take a single level or encounter from a shipped game, diagram its pacing, sightlines, and beats, then rebuild it as a playable greybox.

Project 2 — Technique Tutorial
Candidate techniques to encounter in Project 1 and then teach. Pick one you genuinely did not have going in:

• Programming: Gameplay Ability System · multiplayer replication · custom editor tooling or a plugin · World Partition architecture · AI behavior trees · profiling and optimization
• Design: vertical slice production · data-driven systems tuning · playtesting methodology with real participants · narrative branching implementation

Project 3 — Original Work
Built to fill the gap you named in your Week 3 portfolio review, or to demonstrate a requirement from a real posting your portfolio does not yet show:

• A vertical slice: one level, one core mechanic, fully realized. Playable, polished, published on itch.io with a build that launches.
• Scope it to five weeks. A three-minute experience that is genuinely finished will do more for you than twenty minutes of rough content.

Communities

• Unreal Slackers Discord — very large, active, well-organized by topic
• Unity Discord and Unity forums
• Godot Discord and community
• r/gamedev, r/unrealengine, r/Unity3D, r/leveldesign
• IGDA — local chapters; DFW has an active scene
• Level Design Lobby Discord
• itch.io — jams constantly running
• Global Game Jam (January) — plan to enter
• GDC — student scholarships and volunteer opportunities exist

Where jobs get posted

Studio career pages directly · Work With Indies (workwithindies.com) · RemoteGameJobs · Hitmarker · GameJobs.co · ArtStation Jobs · LinkedIn · Amiqus and Skillsearch (recruiters) · Handshake · Collin College career services

DFW note: the North Texas game industry is real and growing — Gearbox, Certain Affinity (Austin), Playful, and a substantial cluster of smaller studios and XR/simulation companies. Simulation and training work for defense and healthcare absorbs a lot of Unreal and Unity talent in this region and is worth including in your target list.