~/nearex$▋
Fernando
Chavez
aka Nearex_
Senior Game Developer · AI Systems Engineer
I build AI-powered gameplay systems and interactive experiences. 6+ years shipping games across Unity, Unreal Engine 5, and UEFN.
// about
Building at the intersection of game dev & AI
I'm a Senior Game Developer with 6+ years of experience shipping commercial titles across mobile, PC, WebGL, and Fortnite's UEFN platform. My work sits at the intersection of traditional game development and modern AI systems.
At WidowGames, I lead the AI and systems development on Life's Meta — a UE5 life simulation RPG featuring MetaHuman NPCs powered by Convai and local LLM inference via llama.cpp. I believe the next generation of games will be defined by AI that feels genuinely alive.
Beyond shipped titles, I maintain a live interactive sandbox — a Unity WebGL demo where you can explore real implementations of design patterns, AI systems, and architecture patterns I use in production.
// tech stack
// expertise
What I Build
Gameplay Systems
Designing and implementing core game loops, mechanics, and player-facing systems that are both fun and technically robust.
AI Integration
LLM-powered NPCs, behavior trees, state machines, and ML-driven gameplay logic. From llama.cpp to Convai.
Multiplayer Architecture
Real-time networking with rollback netcode, authoritative servers, and deterministic simulation for fair gameplay.
Shader & VFX
Custom Shader Graph materials, URP/HDRP pipelines, holographic effects, dissolve, and procedural noise shaders.
Technical Leadership
Mentoring dev teams, defining architecture standards, leading sprint planning, and driving technical decisions.
Cross-Platform Shipping
Shipping titles across PC, iOS, Android, WebGL, and UEFN. Performance profiling and platform-specific optimizations.
// featured work
Selected Projects
WidowGames · 2023 — Present
Living Scripts
An Unreal Engine 5 RPG where every NPC is driven by a fully custom local AI stack — built from scratch in C++. The system manages local LLM inference, TTS, and lipsync in a single pipeline, giving MetaHuman characters coherent narratives, persistent memory, and natural conversation. Demo coming soon.
WidowGames · 2023 — Present
Geopoly
A mobile geolocation game where players buy, develop, and compete over real-world properties on a live map. Joined to engineer gameplay features and drive a full legacy system refactor — including a zero-downtime Unity 2019→2022 migration and integration of 50+ 3D models, VFX, and UI assets.
Bitionz · 2022 — 2023
Ekuus
A blockchain-based horse racing game where NFT horses compete in provably fair races. The technical centerpiece is a deterministic replay system that allows any race to be replayed identically from its seed data — ensuring full transparency and verifiable fairness for all blockchain transactions.