Hi, I'm Luke Leonard, a game developer and software engineer. After spending four years in industry as a software engineer building large-scale distributed systems, I chose to focus on making games, fulfilling the dream I had as a wide-eyed kid who wanted to grow up to be a game developer.
I specialize in architecting scalable, data-driven gameplay systems that are modular, performant, and built for long-term maintainability. I love building tools that empower designers and make fast iteration enjoyable.
I currently serve as the Lead Software Engineer at Go Face Games, where I'm leading development on Paccarat. I'm always happy to connect and talk about gameplay systems, tooling, and game development in general.
Paccarat is a roguelike multi-deckbuilder where players recruit a rag-tag team of rats, craft a curated deck for each, and discover devastating multi-deck combos. The demo for Paccarat is live on Steam and is set to release in 2026.
Paccarat is built using Unity and C#. As the Lead Software Developer at Go Face Games, I've led development across much of the project, designing and implementing core gameplay and UI systems. My work includes a dynamic effect system for building cards and abilities, robust UI architecture using UI Toolkit and view models, controller and keyboard focus navigation, and a persistent game state system built with ScriptableObjects.
Paccarat is a roguelike multi-deckbuilder where players recruit a rag-tag team of rats, craft a curated deck for each, and discover devastating multi-deck combos. The demo for Paccarat is live on Steam and is set to release in 2026.
Paccarat is built using Unity and C#. As the Lead Software Developer at Go Face Games, I've led development across much of the project, designing and implementing core gameplay and UI systems. My work includes a dynamic effect system for building cards and abilities, robust UI architecture using UI Toolkit and view models, controller and keyboard focus navigation, and a persistent game state system built with ScriptableObjects.
Press the Button is a level-based puzzle game where the player is trying to unsubscribe from a frustrating website that does everything it can to prevent them from leaving. Each level presents a new "minigame" where the player must outsmart the site's UI and AI chatbot to press through an increasingly abnormal unsubscribe process.
This game was created for the Bigmode Game Jam 2026 using Godot and GDScript. This project gave me the opportunity to learn Godot in a fast-paced environment while contributing to level design, building several levels, and helping implement the core game manager responsible for loading and managing scenes as the player progresses.
Press the Button is a level-based puzzle game where the player is trying to unsubscribe from a frustrating website that does everything it can to prevent them from leaving. Each level presents a new "minigame" where the player must outsmart the site's UI and AI chatbot to press through an increasingly abnormal unsubscribe process.
This game was created for the Bigmode Game Jam 2026 using Godot and GDScript. This project gave me the opportunity to learn Godot in a fast-paced environment while contributing to level design, building several levels, and helping implement the core game manager responsible for loading and managing scenes as the player progresses.
Amazon
Software Development Engineer II
July 2021 - June 2025
As an SDE 2 at Amazon, I worked on large-scale distributed systems responsible for orchestrating workflows across multiple internal microservices. My work focused on designing and implementing backend services, integrating cross-team systems, and improving reliability in high-throughput cloud environments built on AWS. I regularly collaborated with operations managers and technical subject matter experts to define system requirements and debug complex production issues.
Key Contributions
- Designed and implemented backend services deployed on AWS Lambda and Fargate within Step Function workflows.
- Built and supported APIs used by other internal services, ensuring backwards compatibility and fault tolerance during and after deployments.
- Integrated cross-team systems using API Gateway, SNS, and SQS to support asynchronous workflow execution and callback notification handling.
- Helped re-architect legacy tools and offline spreadsheets into a modern cloud-native workflow, improving reliability during peak sales events.
- Onboarded and mentored new developers, participated in the interview process, and acted as primary on-call for high severity events.
This experience strengthened my approach to designing scalable, maintainable systems—skills I now apply when building gameplay and UI architecture in game development.
