Welcome!

My name is Jake Finlayson. A generalist creative with skills in...

About Me

For all my life I’ve been creating. When I was 5 I wrote my first book. I made my first board game when I was just 8, started programming and music production at 13. All throughout this time I was trying everything and anything creative. Painting, film making, stop motion animation and game development.I’ve completed a Bachelor of Software Engineering at Media Design School, majoring in Game Programming, and a Diploma in Creative Marketing at Yoobee. Now in my life, I’m eager to continue this journey working in the industry and further developing my skills.

Fav Albums

  • Pure Heroine - Lorde

  • A Crow Looked At Me - Mount Eerie

  • The Black Parade - My Chemical Romance

  • loveless - my bloody valentine

  • dariacore - leroy

Fav Movies

  • Little Mermaid (1989)

  • The Social Network (2010)

  • Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)

  • Love Lies Bleeding (2024)

  • Fight Club (1999)

Contact

Game Dev

Some game projects I designed & programmed

CHUTNEY: Space Survivor

CHUTNEY: Space Survivor is a third person, hoard-shooting deck builder where you play as Chutney, shooting down hordes of enemies with his Omni-gun. Alter your attacks by collecting different cartridges and create unique synergies!

  • AI Behavior

  • Random Level Generation

  • Meta Progression System

  • Optimization and Testing

  • Music and Technical Audio Design

  • Gameplay systems (weapons, destructibles, etc)

  • Game Design

RIDDEN

RIDDEN is a 2D side-scrolling space shooter controlled entirely by the mouse. Play as an armed maintenance drone aboard a spaceship overrun by aliens. Collect organic matter to analyse, upgrade your on-board systems, and fight through alien bosses as you strive to complete your final directives.

  • AI Behaviors

  • Character Movement

  • Branching Progression System

  • Modular Music System

  • Music Production

  • Level and Game Design

cdROM.480p.hd_freeDownload

Play as an e-mail scammer working during the late-'90s. Use the power of deduction, choose the template, and choose the words to create the perfect e-mail based on your victim's personality.

  • Technical Narrative Design

  • Research & Narrative

  • Dynamic Scoring System

  • Optimization and Testing

  • Game Design

PS: This is not my lets play, but it's a good demo of the game

Rattic

The Rattic is a 2D puzzle adventure game with branching narrative, where the player must trade with rat caricatures in the hopes of gaining cheese for their family.

  • Narrative

  • Technical Narrative Implementation

  • Minigames

  • Level Design

  • SFX & Music Production

  • Game Design

Note: Unreleased

Litl Lotl

Play as an adorable axolotl using your unique skillset of detaching your body parts and flinging them wherever you desire, be careful though, doing so has a cost. Explore. Solve puzzles. And maybe commit some genocide!

  • Character Abilities

  • Puzzle Design

  • Level Design

  • SFX & Music Production

  • Game Design

Music

Some cool music I produced...

tides under all

Originally began as part of the OST Composing Jam of 2024, which I ended up scoring 39th out of 650 contestants. I further refined the concept and published it online to major DSP's such as Spotify with a new album cover I illustrated.

CHUTNEY OST

The OST for CHUTNEY: Space Survivors. Incorporating a variety of genres including electroswing, disco, jazz and more. These take form as radio stations in the game, which are accessible through achievement unlocks.

3mourn beats

E-commerce platform selling instrumentals I make D2C through my website. Marketing through a range of channels such as Mailchimp, Instagram and Discord. No longer active.

ethereal melancholy

My debut album release. Focusing on ethereal trap beats taking inspiration from a variety of new Hip-Hop production

space, no

Cowboy Bebop inspired EP. Made during a lot of change and uncertainty in my life.

Marketing

Some marketing and design projects I created...

Makerspace

As an assignment for Yoobee I was tasked with creating marketing collateral for a local council project. In Auckland our libraries actively have a program running promoting the exploration of creative technology such as Game Dev, Music Production, Robotics and 3d Printers called "Makerspace". The target demographic I chose to market to was 14+ teens to young adults. The three marketing collateral I iterated on were posters, Instagram posts and an arcade machine with a game.

Real Groovy

As an assignment for Yoobee I was tasked with creating a full marketing campaign for a company of my choice. I decided to market Real Groovy, an Auckland based vinyl record and film store.
I centered the campaign around their Blu-ray/DVD products, creating a range of digital marketing collateral.

Process

Real Groovy’s iconic logo uses their own custom font that is not publicly available and the iconic orange colour. To keep with its groovy theme while modernising the collateral, I chose three fonts with a comic book feel, and shades of blue to contrast against the orange. Through this theme we’re not alienating the pre-existing audience, whilst allowing us to diversify to film.

Final Collateral

Into The Dead

A mock advertising campaign based on PikPok's upcoming Into The Dead game created as part of an assignment at Yoobee.

Matariki

This assignment required creating a website for an event and researching the significance of Māori culture. I decided to create a website for a Matariki festival held at the famous Hot Water Beach in the Coromandel.