Martins Avots

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Sharp Raccoon - Rules of Robots

At one of our university playtests for Bot Brawl, people stayed after the session to keep messing around with the rules. The funny thing is, we’d only made them customisable because we couldn’t decide which version was more fun. That project was where I met my future co-founders, Trym Rannem, Erlend Brodal and Espen Lindahl. We liked working together, but we all had other projects to get back to, so the game sat for a couple of years.Then Trym showed it to someone at a Unity conference and came back with the idea that we might actually be able to bring it to Nintendo Switch. Around the same time, we entered the demo in the Norwegian Game Awards on a whim. It won Most Innovative Game, and we got a spot in a business accelerator in Trondheim. We figured we’d go and see what happened. In 2020, with their help, the four of us started Sharp Raccoon.Trym was our first CEO, and I started out as game designer and producer. We rebuilt the game in Unreal for local and online multiplayer and renamed it Rules of Robots. We got the Nintendo dev kit and started working towards a Switch release alongside PC. One idea I still really like was our Twitch integration: if a someone was streaming a match, you could click directly on the stream and influence the game they were playing.I don’t think any of us knew what a pitch deck was when we started. Before long we were writing grant applications, showing the game at conferences and talking to publishers. In 2021, we received a 100,000 NOK development grant from Midtnorsk filmsenter. By the time we joined Antler’s programme in Oslo, I was already doing most of the pitching, so it made sense for me to take over as CEO. I worked with our interns, met with publishers and people at Unity, and looked for ways to fund development. Taking those meetings myself meant my co-founders had more time to actually make the game.We made it to the final investment pitch at Antler. The money would have given us time to finish the game and still pay rent, but the process also made me realise how different our ambitions were. We wanted to release our first indie game. The investors needed to see how it could grow into a much bigger business. We didn’t get the investment, and after a few more months of trying to make it work, we decided together to stop. The playable alpha is still up on itch.io.I’m still proud of what we did. I went into Sharp Raccoon knowing I liked making games with these people. What surprised me was how much I enjoyed running a company with them, too.

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bot brawl

Bot brawl is a couch party game you can play with up to 4 people. Shoot nails that bounce off walls to destroy other bots and be the last bot standing.My responsibilities in this project were game design, level design, creation of environmental props and particle effects. At the beginning of the project, I conceived and designed the gameplay loop and main mechanics. After that, I created greybox versions of the playable levels. This allowed the team to test and iterate more rapidly. After that my responsibility was to create the meshes for filling out the level who were then textured by my teammate Erlend Brodal. For the final part of the project, I was responsible for visually polishing the game by filling out the levels with the created assets and creating particle effects.

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project graven

In the near future, a mega-corporation "Dymos" hosts modern gladiator battles. Teams of daring soldiers and mercenaries compete to be the last one standing and win the grand prize. For "Dymos", who broadcast these battles throughout the solar system, this is an unparalleled avenue for advertising.The project aimed to develop an art style and assets for a technical prototype provided by a client. My main responsibility in this project was that of team leader. I was responsible for the development of the project. This meant organizing the sprints, setting task priorities and communicating with the client. Additionally, I was also responsible for some art tasks in the project such as 3D modelling, level design, developing hologram shaders, creating modular assets and trimsheets.

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Gobble run

Thanksgiving has come, a wonderful time. Unless you are a turkey and your beloved has been abducted by an eccentric chef to become a meal! Pursue the chef and free your beloved!This game was made in a custom engine developed by students. The game and the engine were made in 3 weeks. My responsibilities in this project were creating and optimizing assets. Sometimes I created assets based on concept art by other teammates.

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Iraq safe space (VR)

Developed with Norwegian Church Aid (Kirkens Nødhjelp), this bespoke VR experience was designed to support psychosocial work with women affected by gender-based violence in northern Iraq. It combined a private space for individual activities with a shared courtyard designed for social and multiplayer interactions.I led the creative direction and created most of the original environment, visual assets, and interactive experiences. The design drew on research into Iraqi settings and architectural references from the broader region. I aimed for a space that felt warm and culturally considered without trying to reproduce a specific place realistically.The experience centered on a quiet, private room overlooking an enclosed courtyard. In the room, participants could paint on a canvas, keep voice recordings inside small keepsake objects, prepare tea, tend a plant that grew between sessions, listen to different radio stations, and close the curtains for added privacy.The courtyard offered a shared setting for activities. Among its interactions was a mural that participants could help complete by adding painted handprints as leaves to a bare tree. I also created a hand-tracked djembe drum and other activities intended to make the space inviting to explore.A major design challenge was making the experience understandable to people who might be new to VR, including people with limited literacy. The project ran on Meta Quest 3 and used hand tracking, so interactions needed to communicate themselves through the environment and the user’s actions. I iterated with project stakeholders, considering accessibility, cultural sensitivity, and psychological safety throughout the design process.
Later, other team members added multiplayer functionality. My work established the original visual world and the core spaces and interactions on which that shared experience was built.

Tools: Unity, Blender, Substance Painter, Photoshop, Figma, Ableton Live
Platform: Meta Quest 2 & 3

• Innovation Norway Project

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Mindfulnes Fractals (VR)

“Fractals” was the brief. I developed it into a short, music-synchronized VR journey for Fornix’s mindfulness package.The experience begins high above a field of clouds, with a calm soundtrack gradually fading in. As the music unfolds, the sky transforms: blue, cloudlike forms and feather-inspired details give way to evolving fractal and mandala-like patterns that surround the viewer. I wanted it to feel expansive, dreamlike, and gently surreal, while still being calm enough for a mindfulness experience.I had broad creative freedom, so this project became an opportunity to explore a different kind of VR work. Rather than building a conventional environment from discrete assets, I created much of the experience through custom visual effects and Shader Graph. I developed parameters that let the forms evolve over time, then shaped their progression around the music.Iteration was key to getting the tone right. My first version was more energetic and visually intense. I refined it into a calmer experience better suited to the package and its intended users. Informal feedback from people who tried it was very positive; one person described their mind going quiet during the experience. That’s personal feedback, rather than evidence of a clinical effect, but it reflected the sense of immersion and calm I was aiming for.This project is one of the pieces I’m proudest of because it let me combine visual experimentation, music, and technical problem-solving. It also pushed me toward technical art: building the visual system itself, instead of relying mainly on the usual asset and level-design workflow.

Tools: Unity, Shader Graph, Blender, Photoshop, Ableton Live
Platform: Meta Quest 3

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Lava Lamp (VR)

Created at Fornix, this cyberpunk-inspired room centers on an oversized lava lamp, with music and physical interactions inviting users to explore at their own pace.Working from an open brief, I developed the concept, planned the project, and carried out most of the environment and interaction work. I created many of the assets specifically for the space, supported by a small selection of marketplace assets. The project gave me an opportunity to explore a different visual language from the grounded setting of the Iraq Safe Space, while continuing to design around immersion and relaxation.The lava lamp became the main technical challenge. Its blobs needed to merge, separate, and change shape organically, while remaining practical to render on Quest 3. After researching different approaches, I created the animation in Blender and exported it as a sequence of meshes for playback in Unity. I then developed a custom shader to enhance the effect and introduce additional visual variation.Another focal point was a fully custom interactive record player. Users could discover vinyl records scattered around the room, bring them back to the turntable, and play different tracks. I created the player, records, and their interactions, making music selection a physical part of exploring the environment.These records also connected the space to other Fornix projects: two featured music from the Iraq Safe Space and Fractals experiences. For the view outside, I rendered a skybox from an earlier science-fiction environment we had developed. Together, these details gave the room a place within a wider fictional world, with connections users could discover for themselves.I also integrated AutoHand’s hand interaction and locomotion systems. Experimenting with this setup helped me refine how users moved through the room and handled objects; in my own testing, the interactions felt more natural and satisfying.

Tools: Unity, Shader Graph, Blender, Photoshop, Ableton Live, Autohand
Platform: Meta Quest 3

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Growing up, I played everything from board games and Flash games to AAA titles. My favourites were always the ones that gave me room to experiment and find my own way to play. I still love that moment when you think, “I wonder if I can do that,” and the game lets you.That curiosity led me to study game design, where I got into designing mechanics, making 3D art and leading a team. Straight out of university, I co-founded an indie game studio called Sharp Raccoon.More recently, I worked at Fornix VR designing and building experiences for mental healthcare. Two projects I’m especially proud of are Iraq Safe Space and Fractals. For the first, I led the creative work on a VR space we made with Norwegian Church Aid for women in Iraq affected by gender-based violence. Fractals started with a pretty open brief and one word to play with. I ended up making a flight through the clouds into a fractal landscape that shifts in time with the music.I like having a hand in both the idea and the making of it. That might mean figuring out with a team what kind of world we want to build, or spending time on one small detail, like how a record player feels to use.

Outside of work I also enjoy playing and making music, doing different sports like volleyball, snowboarding and calisthenics. I also love to play and host improv theater.

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