The Cycle
Description
As an owl of the night, fly, perch and dive through a snowy ecosystem on a mission to catch your prey off guard. Use your natural instincts and abilities to uncover yummy critters from their hidey holes. Will your strategy and skill keep you alive to see beyond this endless night, or will the immersive song of the wind wisp you away.
Project Info
Role: Gameplay/AI Programmer
Team size: 8
Engine: Unreal Engine 5
Tools: Perforce, Maya, Substance
Duration: 42 hours
Date: January 2026
Awards: Best Gameplay Design Winner
Theme: The Hunt
My Experience
Working on The Cycle, my main focus was making sure the behaviour of the rabbits was fun and engaging to play
with. Making sure that the player gets to feel that thrill exciment when going for the hunt.
Being part of the biggest game jam in Canada and the desire to make my best truly pushed
me harder. The energy of competing at that scale made me more deliberate in every decision,
knowing that the quality of the gameplay systems I built would directly affect how the
game felt to play.
An additional task I took on was sound design, which taught me how much audio shapes the
feel of a game, it truly decides whether a game is immersive or not.
Pairing the right sounds and finding the right spot with the owl's movements and the rabbits'
reactions made the game feel alive and meaningful.
Winning Best Gameplay Design was truly an honor. For me, it is a reflection of how well the team
communicated. We designed every system around making the hunt feel as a memorable experience,
and perhaps something good rather than a negative aspect of life.