Sleighers is a game which combines my love for whimsical snowscapes with a casual, networked multiplayer experience. I began development in Summer 2024 and later pitched it to VGDev at Georgia Tech in Spring 2025, acting both co-lead and primary technical lead alongside my co-lead, a friend focusing mainly on sound design and production.

The core premise is that the entire game is “the snow level”, a casual social multiplayer experience reminiscent of Team Fortress 2 and Halo social modes, and a festive Christmassy experience all in one. 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 project has been an incredible learning experience, especially leading a team of 20+ people. It pushed me to become much more confident in my Unreal Engine skills, adopt new software and project management tools, and to understand the thought process when designing multiplayer game frameworks. For instance, I had only used GitHub for my version control on previous projects, but given its limitations, and some prior Perforce experience in the past, we opted to use Perforce, which I hosted myself, for our version control system. I had never managed a project of this size, nor with a co-lead, and it has required constant communication between me and them, including regular meetings to track progress, tasks, and ensuring technical cohesion between 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!