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Yisi Liu

Game Designer & Developer · Proficient in Unity and Various Programming Languages

I design games to express feelings and experiences to others. I work mainly in Unity and C#, have documented my development process through my blogs, and teach what I learned to others both at school and outside of it.

COSMOS 2026 — UC Santa CruzCACC Chinese School Student Council Vice PresidentPlay my games on itch.io ↗
Yisi Liu
COSMOS 2026
UC Santa Cruz · Video Games: The Design of Fun from Concept to Code
Team lead — created Whisker with a 3-person team
View Official COSMOS Program ↗
Games
Designed and Built
5 released on itch.io · Whisker 3 in development
Play My Games ↗
Experience With These Engines
Unity · Godot · GameMaker · Ren'Py · Bitsy
Languages: C# · C++ · Java · Python
Explore My Technical Projects ↗
Teaching
CACC Chinese School · Tutoring
Unity & Python at CACC; Peer tutor
About CACC Chinese School ↗
Code
github.com/yisliu
Projects repo: code source, README, design doc
View GitHub Repositories ↗
Devblogs
Documents About My Game Development Journey
Design process, bug patches, reflections, and more
Read My Development Journal ↗
The Whisker team with our COSMOS instructors at UC Santa Cruz, the game's title screen behind us

Summer 2026 · UCSC

COSMOS Game Design Cluster — Team Lead, Whisker

Four-week intensive in the Game Design cluster at UC Santa Cruz. I led a three-person team on the final project — Whisker, a cozy 2.5D baking game released on itch.io on our last day, and played by the rest of the cluster at the closing showcase. I set the concept, chose Unity over the four 2D engines the bootcamp had taught us, divided the work across the team, wrote the gameplay code, and presented the finished build.

Teaching & Writing

You can't teach a system you don't understand — so I teach the ones I build. Three years running, two languages.

Teaching Unity — Introduction to Game Design with Unity at CACC

Volunteer Instructor · 2025-2026 · Returning for 2026-2027

Introductory Unity and C# Class for Beginners

CACC Chinese School

What I did

I created and proposed my own online class on Unity and C# through my local chinese school, CACC in order to teach others game development.

Who it was for

This is an introductory Unity and C# course for beginners, primarily aimed at elementary to middle school students.

Why it matters to my work

I noticed that Unity classes weren't offered in my community and, since I enjoyed teaching, I wanted to teach others how to use it too.

UnityC#Volunteer Classes2025-20262026-2027
Teaching Python — helping new programmers go from curious to confident

Volunteer Instructor · 2026-2027

Introductory Python Class for Beginners

CACC Chinese School

What I did

I created and proposed my own online class on Python through my local chinese school, CACC in order to teach others game development.

Who it was for

This is an introductory Python for beginners, primarily aimed at elementary to middle school students.

Why it matters to my work

After creating and running my Unity class, I wanted to create more classes because I had a great time teaching my Unity course. I proposed and created another curriculum specifically centered on Python because I wanted to introduce more people to programming, and Python was the perfect language for that.

PythonVolunteer Classes2026-2027
Macrocosm cluster writers — one selected from each of the 13 COSMOS clusters

COSMOS · Cluster 5: Video Games: The Design of Fun from Concept to Code · Summer 2026

MACROCOSM: The COSMOS E-Newsletter

Macrocosm — COSMOS student e-newsletter

What I did

I signed-up to be a writer for the weekly e-newsletter and I was selected for the cluster recap. I was responsible for taking pictures, writing articles, and keeping record of what cluster five did.

Who it was for

This was for both families of current COSMOS and potential future COSMOS participants, hoping to learn more about the program.

Why it matters to my work

I wanted to participate more at COSMOS so I signed-up for the MACROCOSM because I was interested in being able to write articles and take pictures, but also because the previous MACROCOSM websites were very important for me because they provided key insight on what the program did.

COSMOSSummer 2026

Featured Development Notes

Notes from building games — the ideas that worked, the bugs that didn't, and what I changed along the way.

Whisker 2 Devlog: Bakery: the level that was remade 3+ times. Here's why
DEVLOG

Whisker 2 Devlog: Bakery: the level that was remade 3+ times. Here's why

The Bakery level is the singular level I have probably spent the most amount of time on. The first version of the Bakery would be the centerpiece of the original Whisker game that was created during COSMOS.

Read note →