Castle Cairn

I led production on Castle Cairn at Wee Tattie Studios, managing a fully remote team of 30+ volunteer developers through pre-production and the delivery of an internal demo. Although I was involved from the beginning, the project stalled partway through due to a centralized approval bottleneck that limited momentum. I helped restructure our decision-making process, introducing cross-discipline workflows and shared ownership that enabled teams to move forward without waiting on a single point of approval.

Most of the team had no prior experience with Agile or Scrum, so I created onboarding materials, coached leads on sprint planning and retrospectives, and built a lightweight production framework that balanced structure with flexibility. To support collaboration across time zones and asynchronous work styles, I established clear documentation practices, introduced a shared task-tracking system by migrating from using sticky notes on Miro to ClickUp (a free Jira alternative), and implemented predictable sprint cadences.

I also mentored new contributors, guided the team through creative and interpersonal conflicts, and helped build a healthy production culture grounded in autonomy, clarity, and mutual respect.

As a result, we went from a six-month production stall to delivering a playable vertical slice in just two months.

In addition to leading production, I served as the primary AI programmer. I used Unreal Engine 5’s State Tree system to design non-combat monster behavior that created tension without direct threat; stalking the player, appearing unpredictably, vanishing when observed, and casting shadows from behind. I also contributed to puzzle programming and established the team’s sub-level and level streaming workflows to support collaborative world building. Gameplay Overview can be found here: