John Rantala

JOHN RANTALA

Technical Product Lead. Bridging Business & Tech to deliver value.

(!) KEY PROJECTS

GAME TITLES
SOFT LAUNCH

Hill Climb Racing 3

UNITY // 2025 // MOBILE
ROLE: Producer and Lead Game Designer

I was given the opportunity to lead the production of Hill Climb Racing 3 from the ground up, hiring a team of talented individuals to bring this vision to life. Later, I stepped in to the role of Lead Game Designer, overseeing the development of the game's overall gameplay experience, features, and economy design. During the production of the game, I actively participated in programming features and tools for the game and made complementary art assets that ended up in the released product.

MY ACHIEVEMENTS

  • Building a team of 12+ professionals and leading with one vision
  • Full gacha and economy design
  • Creating a Level Editor and other tooling
  • Gameplay and technical art programming (gadgets, hazards, etc.)
  • Complementary art asset production (rigs, animations, assets)
STORE Website
IN DEVELOPMENT

Guns & Goo

UNITY // TBD // PC & CONSOLE
ROLE: Solo Developer

I am currently working on Guns & Goo, a 2D local multiplayer platformer mayhem game where every pixel of the terrain is destructible. This brings together my love for platformers and childhood favorites like Worms, Liero, and Super Smash Bros. I am developing this on my free time with a special contract with my employer, so I own the immaterial properties of the game. I have a 2D artist working with me, who is responsible for the majority of the assets.

MY ACHIEVEMENTS

  • Technical implementation of optimized destructible terrain
  • Tech art solution for the liquid system
  • SDF textures used and sampled for terrain VFX
  • Indie development experience
Linkedin tech article
PUBLISHED

Lego Hill Climb Adventures

UNITY // 2024 // MOBILE
ROLE: Game Developer

I was part of the initial team for Lego Hill Climb Adventures, working on the game's development from the ground up. I was responsible for programming features and tools for the game. My role in the beginning of the project was to rapidly prototype core gameplay features while building the 3D Level Editor tools that would later serve as a foundation for the Hill Climb Racing 3's Level Editor.

MY ACHIEVEMENTS

  • Creating 3D tools for level creation
  • Rapidly prototyping core gameplay features
  • Producing 2D/3D asset placeholders
STORE STORE Website
KILLED

AUTOFIRE HEROES

Unity // 2020 // MOBILE
ROLE: Producer & Designer, Tools and Gameplay Programmer

I selected a team of talented UAS students from the Oulu Game Lab to work on a mobile 2D platformer and shooter MVP. We used Unity and C# to create the game, and I was responsible for mentoring the team and ensuring that they were on track to deliver a quality product.

MY ACHIEVEMENTS

  • Building & mentoring the team
  • Creating 2D tools, integrating SDKs
  • Gameplay programming and publishing to Google Play
KILLED

Llama Pinata

Unity // 2018 // MOBILE
ROLE: Solo Developer

I created a Hyper-Casual mobile game on my free time while working as the Publishing Director at Fingersoft's publishing company Round Zero. The game was published on Google Play and used as a testbed for our custom analytics SDK and publishing platform I was also involved in developing.

MY ACHIEVEMENTS

  • Programming the game
  • Creating all 2D & 3D art assets
  • Running UA campaigns
  • Co-developing a custom analytics SDK
PUBLISHED

TradeAway

Unity // 2017 // PC/MOBILE
ROLE: Freelance Solo Artist & Developer

I got the opportunity to work as a freelancer for Laurea UAS and create all art assets and programming for a PC/Android game called TradeAway. Before this, I was part of a student project team that designed the game in collaboration with the International Chamber of Commerce.

Website

(?) OTHER PROJECTS

PROTOTYPES, JAMS, AND EXPERIMENTS

Guns & Goo Map Editor

Role: Developer

The destructible terrain environment and map editor technical solutions I developed for building Guns & Goo consist of processing damage shapes in Job System and Burst compiler for single channel alpha textures and rendering them with a custom shader which draws outlines, inner highlights, and more. Colliders are also generated with the help of the Job system and Burst compiler using the Marching Squares algorithm.

C# Unity HLSL Tech Art 3D modeling

Mountain Climb Prototype

Role: Solo Artist & Developer

A "Getting Over It" for mobile prototype. Drag to sling character forward, tap to stop rotating to adjust for landing. Meaningful upgrades, including Shoe Friction, Body Bounciness, Jump Height, and more. There would've been room for more mechanics, including Double Jump, Jetpack etc. and I believe plenty of hybrid-casual and HTML5 potential. Made in 2 working days for Fingersoft "demo days" prototyping jam.

Game Design C# Unity 2D Art Physics

Vertex Shadow Baker

Role: Developer

While I cannot showcase the Level Editor tools I've created for Fingersoft's 3D Hill Climb Racing games, I can show you the Vertex Shadow Painter technology I first prototyped at home before integrating it into the project. I wanted to have as optimized shadows as possible, and one weekend realized each track segment is a unique mesh, so painting simple area shadows into the vertex color arrays should be an optimized approach. The initial version was tested on my own spline 3D mesh editor tools I was making for fun.

C# Unity HLSL Tech Art 3D modeling

Moon Driver

Role: Designer & Developer

More than a decade old prototype of a Hill Climb Racing style mobile game. The idea was to make a version of Hill Climb Racing that followed the best practices of infinite runner monetization with several UX and mechanic improvements to Fingersoft's original. The prototype was never finished. Majority of 2D artwork created by © Krista Talvipuro.

Game Design C# Unity 2D Art Physics

Wax Boy

Role: Game Jam Programmer

Game Jam game with the theme Lost & Found. The game is about a boy made of wax who is lost underground, looking for his home with the use of a grappling hook and light crystals. 2D artwork created by © Joona Hautala & Anton Lehtola. I was the most senior programmer in the team so I was responsible for the core game mechanics, including the verlet physics rope.

C# Verlet physics rope Teamwork

Bride Heist

Role: Solo Artist & Developer

The kidnapping of the bride is a Finnish wedding tradition. I developed a game for my own wedding where the groom has to rescue the bride from a kidnapping entity. The winner with the highest score got a special reward in the wedding party. It was a nice experience to develop the visual style of the wedding and use it in the game art assets, which were inspired by paper cutouts, akin to Paper Mario.

Game Design C# Unity

Other Side Projects

Role: Varied

I've worked on several other side projects showcased in the videos above. In all but one I've been the solo artist and developer. The golf game was created in two working days. I enjoy testing mechanics and ideas rapidly, and love making juicy gameplay - be it with shaders, animations, code, or mockups and sheet calculations.

Game Design C# Unity