# Founding Sawnoff Studios

*2026-01-20*

> A chip off the old block


Over the past few years I've been spending an increasing amount of my spare time in Unreal Engine – mostly through a game programming course I completed, plus prototypes, demos, and one proper game project.

Up until now, all of that work has been scattered across my [personal GitHub account](https://github.com/maceage), with no real identity tying it together. So I've decided to give it all a home: **Sawnoff Studios**.

You can find it here:

* **Website:** [sawnoffstudios.com](https://sawnoffstudios.com)
* **YouTube:** [youtube.com/@SawnoffStudios](https://www.youtube.com/@SawnoffStudios)
* **GitHub:** [github.com/sawnoff-studios](https://github.com/orgs/sawnoff-studios)

## The name

I wanted something straightforward. A sawn-off shotgun is compact, unpretentious, and functional – something small, cut off from something larger, and entirely practical about what it's for. That felt like the right description of what this is.

I've also gone for the tagline *"a chip off the old block"* – partly because I like a pun, and partly because it captures the same idea from the other direction: something that broke away from the whole and stands perfectly well on its own.

## What it is – and, more importantly, what it isn't

**It isn't a startup.** I have no plans to hire anyone, chase funding, or "scale". There's no roadmap slide.

**It isn't a career change – not yet, anyway.** I'm still very much a software engineer, still applying for full-time engineering roles, and Sawnoff Studios is something I'm building in the evenings and on weekends. If the right role came along in the games industry, I'd take it. For now, though, this is the side hustle.

**It *is* a banner I can release things under.** Any games, prototypes, or Unreal Engine experiments I finish from here on gets released as Sawnoff Studios. That's really the entire point: a consistent identity for work I'd be doing anyway.

I've registered an [ABN to trade under](https://abr.business.gov.au/ABN/View?id=65516886713), which is about as far as the business side has gone so far. Registering an ABN locks in the name; beyond that there's nothing to report, and there may not be for a while.

## What's already there

Honestly, not much – but nearly all of it traces back to the [CG Spectrum Game Programming Foundations]({{< relref "/posts/2025/completing-my-unreal-engine-course" >}}) course I completed, which is fitting, because that course is what kicked all of this off:

**[Graveyard Gunner]({{< relref "graveyard-gunner" >}})** is the flagship, such as it is. A third-person shooter built in Unreal Engine 5.6 during the course, with skeletal dismemberment, blood and gore effects, AI-driven enemies, and extensible weapon and material effect systems. The source is up on  [GitHub](https://github.com/sawnoff-studios/graveyard-gunner-source), and it's [downloadable](https://downloads.sawnoffstudios.com/GraveyardGunner-Latest.html) too.

**[Tank Game](https://github.com/sawnoff-studios/tank-game)** came from the same course – a smaller project focused on [Chaos physics and destruction](https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/unreal-engine/physics-in-unreal-engine), driving a tank into a building and watching it fall down. Deeply satisfying :slightly_smiling_face:

Beyond those, the GitHub org holds the sample projects built during the course — [AI avoidance behaviour](https://github.com/sawnoff-studios/avoidance-demo), [Niagara systems](https://github.com/sawnoff-studios/niagara-system-demo), [a Gameplay Ability System demo](https://github.com/sawnoff-studios/gameplay-ability-system), [state machines](https://github.com/sawnoff-studios/state-machine-demo), [wall-running characters](https://github.com/sawnoff-studios/wall-running-character-demo), and [NavMesh navigation](https://github.com/sawnoff-studios/nav-mesh-demo).

To be clear about what these are: they're the course's sample projects, worked through as part of the lessons rather than designs of my own. I've kept them in the org because they cover a lot of ground across the engine's systems, and they were where I learned to do most of it. But they're exercises, not portfolio pieces.

The **[YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/@SawnoffStudios)** is where Unreal Engine work gets documented as I go – capture videos, milestones, and the sort of progress clips that don't warrant a full blog post.

## Why bother?

You can absolutely release games under your own name, and plenty of people do. For me, there are a few reasons:

1. **Separation.** My personal blog and GitHub are engineering-focused. Keeping game work under its own name keeps both honest about what they are.
2. **Permission to be small.** Giving it a name makes it a *thing*, even a tiny one – something I can point at, rather than _"some games stuff I do sometimes"_.
3. **Momentum.** Having a place to publish things to makes me finish them, which historically has been my weak point.

## What's next

More of the same, really: more Unreal Engine work in the evenings, more videos, more prototypes – and eventually, a first proper original game released under the name. Something designed and built from scratch rather than grown out of a course brief.

I'll keep writing about how it goes, including some AWS-related infrastructure work – but that's a topic for another post.

For now, the shotgun is loaded, so to speak. There's just not much in it yet.