Hello! My name is Keith, and I am the solo developer behind Outbreak Genesis. I am currently 34 and was born and raised in California and have always been a pretty avid gamer, though I’ve slowed down thew older I get. My focus lately has been on creating my own title as a developer.

        As a child, I had a Nintendo 64 and Super Nintendo, and I played a lot of classics, mainly Super Mario Bros. I would call my uncle for tips on beating bosses I was stuck on. Times were so simple back then. The first PC introduced into my household was a Dell with Windows 98, and Starcraft became my first and favorite PC game for years. I’d sneak into my parents’ room when they were at work just to play, spending countless hours in that world.

        After a few years of Starcraft and entering middle school, the era of sleepovers began. One of my friends stayed over and brought his Xbox—this was in 2001, right after its release. He had one game: Halo. It was the best thing I’d ever seen, and we stayed up all night playing. A little less than a year later, I got an Xbox for my birthday, just as Xbox Live came out in 2002. The idea of playing games with people worldwide blew my mind. The Xbox came with Unreal Championship, and I played it all the time. It was unbelievable.

        This brings me to the game I’m developing. In 2005, we’d seen only a limited number of titles released. Then, Stubbs the Zombie came out. You play as a zombie in a semi-humorous world, eating humans’ brains and turning them into followers, commanding them to eat more humans. As a 15-year-old with limited games, I loved it. Even now, in 2024, few games let you play as an infective entity in the human population—it’s a niche I wanted to dive into as a solo developer. Games like Shadow of War and Cyberpunk also influenced Outbreak Genesis. Head to the “About Outbreak Genesis” page to learn more, and explore the website—I’ve put a lot of time into it to showcase my progress.

        My journey with Unreal Engine 5, Blender, and other programs has been challenging and rewarding, with over 4,200 hours invested in the past two years. Working solo on this title has been a rush. It’s helped me develop and refine skills I took for granted in high school, like note-taking. With no mentor or YouTube tutorials, I go straight to the software documentation for guidance, directly from the creators. This approach has led to hundreds of pages of notes, but with progress, I’ve come to learn new concepts without needing as many notes. Unreal Engine has become a playground.

        While I love every part of this game’s development, creating NPC logic is my favorite. From complex systems like state machines, spawners, and NPC pool classes (recycling spawned assets), to more detailed tasks like NPCs reacting to enemies realistically by taking cover correctly and using ray-trace offsets for realistic aiming. These systems help immerse the player in the game world, and I look forward to sharing them during Dev Days and on the Outbreak Genesis Discord Server.
One of my biggest hurdles in Unreal was understanding how different systems communicate with each other. Figuring out how to trigger events simply and clearly was essential for a clean, functional project. As you’ll see in the progress content, I keep an extremely clean project with no “spaghetti code” (messy logic).

        As a solo developer, I take on every role in the project—from designing mechanics and coding game-play systems to creating immersive NPC logic. It’s a challenging yet deeply rewarding journey that pushes me to learn and grow across all areas of development.

        I’m very new to sharing progress, having never been into social media, but I’m here to document the development of Outbreak Genesis and connect with others who enjoy this niche genre. I hope my journey resonates with you!