Sleighers is a game which combines my love for whimsical snowscapes with a casual, networked multiplayer experience. What became Sleighers started in Summer 2024 as me messing around with networking in Unreal Engine 5. I later pitched the idea to my friend Jack Hayley, and we both pitched the game to VGDev at Georgia Tech in Spring 2025, acting both as the co-lead and primary technical lead alongside my friend who focused primarily on sound design and production. The development of the game has given us the opportunity to attend multiple game conventions, like DreamHack and SFGE, meet, learn and work with many talented developers, and grow both as developers and collaborators. These experiences have ultimately driven us to self-publish the game on Steam and continue to develop the game beyond its original scope.
The core premise of Sleighers is that the entire game is “the snow level”: a casual social multiplayer experience reminiscent of Team Fortress 2> and Halo games' social modes, wrapped in a festive Christmas setting. Players join one of two teams: Team Fir (Free Insurgent Army), whose characters include anthropomorphized animals native to the arctic region, like the Canada Lynx – Team Fae (Festive Army of the Empire), whose characters include mythical creatures drawn from European folklore, like Elves. Each team competes to fill their “Cheer” meter by first decorating and then maintaining control over objectives on the map. The first team to reach the target Cheer threshold wins the match.
Developing Sleighers has been a significant challenge. Before this project, I had only put together some mechanics for basic shooters in Unreal Engine, not in a standalone project, let alone a fully networked multiplayer one. Additionally, my co-lead and I envisioned an atmospheric experience, and we agreed to use audio middleware for in-game audio, specifically FMOD. While I had experience with FMOD, using it to implement game audio in a networked environment proved difficult. This pushed us to learn more about Unreal Engine’s Gameplay Framework and networking systems, and how audio systems and our player interactions need to be designed to remain synchronized across multiple clients.
This project has been an incredible learning experience, especially as the leader of a team of 16+ people. It pushed me to become much more confident in my Unreal Engine skills, adopt new software and project management tools, and develop a deeper understanding of the considerations involved in designing multiplayer game systems. For instance, I had previously relied on GitHub for version control, but given its limitations for a project of this size, along with my prior experience with Perforce P4, we opted to use a self-hosted Perforce P4 server for version control. I set up and continue to maintain our own Linux server Ubuntu to host it. I had never managed a project of this scale or worked with a co-lead before, and doing so has required constant communication and collaboration. We hold regular meetings to track progress, coordinate tasks, and maintain technical cohesion across our systems.
The Sleighers team remains hard at work, striving to bring our vision to life – having adorable little arctic animals battle mythical creatures with guns which shoot Christmas lights! Wishlist it today on Steam by clicking the play button in the title header!
The Sleighers team remains hard at work, striving to bring our vision to life – having adorable little arctic animals battle mythical creatures with guns which shoot Christmas lights! Wishlist it today on Steam by clicking the play button in the title header!