Technical Lead / Engine & Environment Lead · 2024 - Present
Hiraeth
Leading a 6-person team through a production game pipeline
6
Team Size
150+
Design Documents
2
Custom Tools
6
Team Size
Cross-discipline team: art, design, sound, narrative, engineering
150+
Design Documents
Comprehensive pre-production covering every system and narrative arc
2
Custom Tools
Loom and OmniDex — born from real production bottlenecks
The Project
Head Empty Studios started with a question: what would a survival horror game look like if every obstacle had multiple solutions? Not just shoot-or-sneak, but force, technology, and physics as three distinct paths through every encounter. That idea became Hiraeth — a post-apocalyptic narrative game built in Unreal Engine 5, set in a decaying industrial world where exploration and environmental storytelling drive the experience.
The team is six people: artists, a game designer, a sound designer, a narrative designer, and me as technical lead. My job splits into two responsibilities — building the engine-level systems that make the game work, and making sure five other people can do their best work without waiting on me. That second responsibility turned out to be the harder problem, and the one that taught me the most about engineering leadership.
We committed to pre-production at a scale that would keep us honest. Over 150 design documents covering every system, every mechanic, every narrative thread. That documentation is not overhead — it is the only way six people stay aligned on a project this complex without constant meetings. The vertical slice is in progress. But the real story of Hiraeth is not the game itself — it is what building the game forced us to build along the way.
Project Milestones
Team Formation
Early 2024
Head Empty Studios assembled with six people across art, design, sound, narrative, and engineering. Each member brought a different discipline but shared the same vision for the game.
Design Documentation
Mid 2024
150+ design documents written covering every game system, mechanic, and narrative arc. This documentation became the team alignment backbone for the entire project.
Production Bottlenecks
Late 2024
Non-programmers blocked on Blueprint creation, waiting on a programmer for every gameplay change. 1,318 assets accumulated with no way to search or organize them efficiently.
Loom Development
Early 2025
Built a 43-tool MCP server so the team could create Blueprint game logic through natural language conversations with AI assistants.
OmniDex Development
Early 2025
Built a Tauri desktop app with Rust-powered full-text search for production assets — instant results across every file in the project without opening UE5.
Vertical Slice
2025
Production pipeline fully streamlined with custom tooling in place. Vertical slice demo in active development with the entire team contributing independently.
Production Pipeline
Before Custom Tooling
Non-programmers waited on me for every single Blueprint change. Asset discovery meant manually browsing 1,318 files across nested directories. Iteration cycles stretched from hours to days because every gameplay tweak required a programmer in the loop. I was the bottleneck, and the whole team felt it.
After Loom + OmniDex
Team members create Blueprint logic through natural language conversations via Loom. OmniDex indexes every asset for instant search with thumbnail previews extracted from .uasset binary files. The pipeline moves without me in the critical path, and gameplay iteration cycles dropped from days to minutes.
Tools Born from Need
Loom and OmniDex were not side projects or portfolio exercises. They were direct responses to production problems that were actively slowing the team down. When non-programmers needed to create game logic but could not write Blueprints, I built Loom — a 43-tool MCP server that bridges AI assistants and Unreal Engine so team members could describe behavior in plain English and get working results. When the team had over a thousand assets and no way to find what they needed, I built OmniDex — a local-first search engine with full-text indexing and thumbnail previews.
Both tools have their own case studies covering the technical depth. The point here is simpler: they exist because this team needed them to exist. The best tools come from real pain, not from imagining what might be useful.
Where We Are
Hiraeth is in active development with a vertical slice in progress. The production pipeline is solid, the team is unblocked, and the game is taking shape. The custom tooling removed me from the critical path for most gameplay iteration, which means I can focus on engine-level systems while the rest of the team moves independently. The biggest takeaway is not the game — it is what I learned about leading a team. Engineering leadership is not about writing the most code. It is about building systems and tools that let everyone else do their best work.
- A good technical lead identifies and resolves production bottlenecks before they have a chance to stall the entire project
- Building custom tools for your team is as valuable as building the product itself — sometimes even more so
- Pre-production documentation at scale (150+ design docs) pays off every day when six people need to stay aligned on every design decision
- The best engineering leadership serves the people doing the creative work, not just the codebase itself