Hi, I'm Matt Everett. My partner Alicia Cornelia and I work on and release games under the name Cavernlore. Here are some of the things we've made!

I'm passionate about making games involving player-guided exploration and discovery of any kind. That could mean spelunking a Metroidvania environment, unraveling a mystery full of puzzles and surprises, or building a character's skill tree. I love games that show the player a cool thing they can't have yet, and then let them create their own goals to get there.

At my day job I program in C#, and the games I write are usually either in C# or Haxe. I've also made stuff in Unity, C++, ActionScript 3, Python, and Game Maker.

Star by Star

Plug and Play

The Errand/The Escape

Theta Colony

Wizard's Peril

End of the Month

Star by Star

Space city-building strategy
Written in HaxeFlixel

My current project is a space strategy game inspired by citybuilding games like the Caesar or Anno series. Guide a spacefaring civilization from launching their first colony ship, to terraforming extrasolar worlds, to building jumpgate networks and taming hyperspace, to building Dyson spheres and harnessing the power of entire suns.

Plug and Play

Arena platformer with custom controllers
Prototyped in HaxeFlixel, written in Unity
Team members: Matt Everett, Dan Bower, John Lynk, and Josh Willsey

My Global Game Jam 2015 entry. Two players fight each other in an arena, using custom-built controllers: Player 1 uses a toaster, and Player 2 uses a pair of shoes. Each character has different abilities to compliment their control style.

I wrote our prototype in HaxeFlixel, where I designed and balanced the two characters and built the arena. (The final game was released in Unity, where it was easier to communicate with our custom controllers.) I also did most of the pixel art.

Video of gameplay at GGJ 2015

Game homepage

The Errand/The Escape

Exploration platformer
Written in AS3
Team members: Matt Everett, Alicia Cornelia

Two short platformers I made for the One Game A Month challenge. I built them to practice level design/creation, platforming physics, and pixel art.

Both games have the player exploring an open world and collecting gems to unlock the exit. The second game expands on the first with deathtraps, more varied art, and a double-jump powerup.

Play The Errand

Play The Escape

Theta Colony

Colony Builder/Tower Defense
Written in AS3
Team members: Matt Everett, Alicia Cornelia

A colony builder game with tower defense elements, inspired by Outpost 2 and released for the One Game A Month challenge. Build housing and shelter for your colonists, manage resource production and power generation, and fend off alien bugs that try to wreck your structures.

Play Theta Colony

Wizard's Peril

Roguelike
Written in C#
Team members: Matt Everett, Alicia Cornelia

A roguelike built entirely around spellcasting. Learn new spells, get to the bottom of the dungeon, and seal the rift to the Plane of Fire.

A lot of the fun with this project was messing with the dungeon generation algorithms, figuring out how to make something more interesting than blocky square rooms and corridors. Building the spellcasting code was also a challenge, since I wanted to support multiple damage types, buffs and debuffs, damage over time, chained spell effects, etc. I spent a lot of time looking at open-source roguelikes for inspiration, as well as tools like the Starcraft 2 editor.

Download Wizard's Peril

Wizard's Peril on Github

End of the Month

Edutainment
Written in AS3
Team members: Matt Everett, Alicia Cornelia

An edutainment game about social programs in Rochester. This was a One Game A Month project made for Alicia's sister, who wanted an interactive component for her university class presentation on social services.

Players take on the role of a social worker, investigating the living conditions of a senior citizen on welfare. After talking to her and investigating her apartment, players are shown a list of Rochester social programs they can match up with her problems.

Play End of the Month