Hi, I’m Patrick. I make things.
I’m interested how imagination can be put in the service of universal flourishing and the elimination of want and fear. And also, cartoons!
I made this website (source code) using Astro, an “islands architecture” framework. It’s hosted on GitHub Pages.
You may contact me at pscale01 at Gmail dot com.
A game inspired by Chip’s Challenge. You control a character that can push blocks around, collect items… Standard fair for a tile-based puzzler, but with zombies! The zombies also interact with the tiles. Though their behavior is predefined, the cumulative effect of their movements can be hard to predict.
(Still in development as of April 2025)
Now with touch screen controls!
Though the gameplay is 2D, I’ve implemented it in 3D because I have aspirations to make the gameplay 3D.
At the core is a reactive state manager/ECS that I (unfortunately) wrote from scratch. I didn’t think it would get so complicated! It does integrate nicely with the editor backend, though.
More justifiably, I also devised a non-blocking spatially-addressed message passing system to allow entities (e.g. the player and a block) to communicate with each other without being tightly coupled.
It’s like those refrigerator magnets with words written on them, but 3D! And gravity, instead of magnetism…
I created these, with the help of a few other artist friends, for an art show in which the theme was collaboration, allowing guests to collaboratively create towering works of poetry.
I took a 2D design class at City College. One of the projects was to create a facsimile of a photograph using only 2 colors of construction paper. I choose a photo used in the promotional materials for the movie Dogtown and the Z-boys.
Some party fliers I made. I also have to take some responsibility for the concepts behind them.
It was summer, so we wanted a beachy theme. But also, cows from outer space.
Spring-themed masquerade.
Halloween party, with the conceit that there was just a big conference in town: World wide witches and warlocks. What’s scarier than witches? The masks and performances we have to put on at professional conferences and networking events.
I’ve been lucky to be able to contribute both illustration and programming to a project called Socratic Garden. The basic idea is to leverage LLM technology to allow instructors to ghostwrite “textbooks” that can engage in dialogues with students, facilitating active, constructivist learning. This seems to work especially well for STEM subjects. Perhaps this kind of technology will not only improve learning outcomes, but take some burden off of overworked teachers. That’s the hope, at least.
If nothing else, the ability to have things explained by a pirate might make dense topics a bit more approachable.
Some portraits from my sketchbook.
It’s going to get weird now.
I’ve been wanting an opportunity for all kinds of game designers and game players to come together and explore the art and craft of games. I wanted something more low-key than a game jam, less formal than a play testing event, and more playful than a networking event. Inspired by a now defunct event called Sandbox Open Mic, I decided to start hosting a similar monthly event.
I hope for it to become a place and time where game design is done in public, with a radically inclusive ethos. I hope that it helps strengthen the local game development community, and in particular, reinvigorates the live games scene which seems to have all but disappeared during the Covid-19 pandemic. The reason I’m interested in live games is that they have an inherently inclusive, and even contagious quality. They tend to not require a lot of expensive or delicate materials, and they tend to scale well. This lowers the barriers for both designers and players.