Simen Wolters
Generalist Game Programmer
simenwol@gmail.com🎓 3rd year game programming student at Breda University of Applied Sciences.
Suck It Up! - Programming Lead | Upcoming Steam Release
Programming Lead for a 25+ member university team currently in production, developing an Unreal Engine title planned for release on Steam in May 2026. Responsible for coordinating a team of 7 programmers and guiding the technical side of development.
My Contributions: Team Leadership | Gameplay Systems | Code Reviews | Release & Marketing Management
Engine/Tools: C++ & Blueprints with Unreal Engine
Team Size: 25+ (7 programmers, 7 designers, 10 artists, 5+ outsourced)
Duration: 24 weeks (November 2025 - June 2026)
Overview
Suck It Up! is an action-adventure where players take the role of an exterminator tasked with clearing Cloud Town of its growing critter infestation. Armed with a vacuum-powered toolkit, players must capture pests and restore order to the city.
This project is in active development, and is planned for release in late May 2026.
My Contributions
- Programming Lead: Led and coordinated the programming team while guiding technical decisions.
- Release & Marketing Management: Coordinated development milestones and acted as liaison between the team and extenral marketing support.
- Gameplay Systems: Implemented gameplay features including the pulley system and gameplay prototypes.
- Profiling & Performance Standards: Established performance targets and profiling practices to maintain stable frame rates.
Below I will go over some of these in more detail:
Programming Lead
Halfway through pre-production (about 8 weeks into the project), I took over the role of programming lead. Since then, I’ve been guiding technical development and team coordination, which includes:
- Led and coordinated a team of 7 programmers, organizing tasks, resolving blockers, and ensuring consistent progress across gameplay, systems, and tool development.
- Defined and maintained coding standards and workflow practices to ensure consistent architecture and maintainable Unreal C++ code across the programming team.
- Maintained alignment between programmers, designers, artists, and production through frequent check-ins and cross-discipline meetings.
- Resolved communication issues within the team through direct conversations and mediation to maintain a productive and positive development environment.
- Managed programming workload and coordinated closely with design and art teams to ensure technical feasibility and smooth feature integration.
- Communicated development progress and technical updates to external stakeholders.
- Conducted code reviews to maintain code quality and provided technical direction on game systems, helping guide technical implementation decisions across the team.
Release & Marketing Management
During the later stages of the project, I assisted with preparing for the game’s release and marketing efforts.
Together with other leads and our producer, we established release milestones and defined which features each release would ship with. I then helped ensure that these deadlines were met by coordinating with the programming team and monitoring development progress.
For marketing, our team collaborated with an external marketing student. I acted as the main point of contact between the development team and the marketing collaborator. While they led the creative side of marketing (such as social media posts, marketing materials, and copywriting), I was responsible for coordinating communication, ensuring marketing tasks were properly delegated within the team, and making sure deadliens for marketing assets were met.