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Ben Cuan
Software + Games
Websites

Bananium Labs

LaunchHacks

2TBS

Games

It's Rude To Point

Bullet Heaven

AtomBlast

Hackathons

CarrotCane

AudiSea

Aegis

HotSwap

Honeydue

Aspicio

Organizations
Two Terabyte Studios

Two Terabyte Studios was formed in late Summer 2016 after working on the development of AtomBlast the prior year with the intent to create the first game development club at Monta Vista High School. We created four games as a club, one of which has been officially published.

2TBS operated towards the goal of educating the community in game development through real production by producing our own games from start to finish. Over our two years of operation, we have had over 30 current and past members, over 10 of whom create our core game development team with in-house artists, programmers, animators, designers, writers, and managers. While our preferred development engine is Unity, we are always open to experimentation, and have tested development through other popular engines such as Unreal Engine, Lumberyard, Godot, and GameMaker Studio.

As the code lead, I directed the 2TBS code team and worked closely with the lead organizers to oversee weekly meetings, design implementations, and timelines.
Bananium Labs

Bananium Labs was formed in November 2017 after numerous students consolidated and decided to work cooperatively. We decided to create an organization in which we could organize our various software projects, Git repositories, and hackathon submissions into one place. Never again would we have to have the hour-long debate surrounding whose account to associate our code to. What started as a small group of three developers grew quickly, as we began to look for more members to attend hackathons and contribute to our projects. So far, we have attended 8 hackathons (our projects are showcased below). We're also interested in game development- our game projects are organized within Two Terabyte Studios.

Bananium Labs is a 501c3 tax-exempt organization, obtained after a focus shift to better fit our present purpose of developing new and exciting projects and inspiring others to create their own projects. We offer a multitude of services and support to turn dreams into reality through promoting entrepeneurship and product ideation.

I am the cofounder and Director of Operations at Bananium Labs, playing a major role in nonprofit management and directing several projects, most notably LaunchHacks.
LaunchHacks

Launch Hacks is an annual high school hackathon. In addition to helping students improve their design and development skills, LaunchHacks aims to provide support to help students improve business and presentation skills- not just to pitch a successful project, but also to inspire the next generation of inventors, entrepreneurs, and leaders.

I was the lead director of the first edition of LaunchHacks, which took place in April 2019. Some of my contributions included logo design, managing relations with corporate donors, organizing catering, website design, and overseeing a team of 9 organizers.
Trisagion Games

Trisagion Games is a newly-formed indie game development studio with fellow developers Omar Hossain, Kevin Chu, and Nicholas Chen. This summer, we created three games from start to finish and participated in two game jams. In the future, we aim to release full games, both as a hobby and as a profession.
Art + Design
I created the Bananium Labs website alongside cofounder Eric Qian. We are currently in the process of revamping it to better reflect our position as a nonprofit organization.
The LaunchHacks site was created from scratch by me and the 2019 LaunchHacks Tech Team. I designed the website, the logos, and the animated banner.
The 2TBS website was one of my first web design projects and served as the base for the new Bananium Labs website.
It's Rude To Point is a tactile menagerie of point-and-click action minigames, all of which revolve around the use of a single on-screen finger. Your finger can do a lot of things: grab onto objects, flick them away, and even spin around to do some 360-degree pointing. Simply survive as long as you can with just your finger, while the minigames only get harder and faster!

IRTP was created in 48 hours and submitted to Mark Brown's GMTK Game Jam 2019, the largest game jam on itch.io with over 2500 submissions.
A "twin"-stick shooter with 2% aim and 200% righteousness. Fend off against endless waves of demonic forces, and let your name be known across the heavens.

Bullet Heaven was initially developed in 72 hours for ScoreSpace Jam 5, and is in the continued development stage. The official release will be announced soon!
AtomBlast is an online multiplayer arena game set at the atomic level. You control your own atom and fight with your team against other players to gain the most points. Collect atoms to craft into compounds with the click of a button- each compound has unique qualities that can help you attack, defend, and gain buffs! Strategically minded maps, weaponry, team play, and game modes only add to the fuel!

AtomBlast is a project created in collaboration with BananiumLabs.
CarrotCane is a DIY cane attachment to assist the blind and visually impaired. Features include: automatic detection of nearby objects with audible alarm and feedback when approaching too quickly, ability to attach a smartphone to provide live GPS tracking and video feed, and online supervisor console to give voice directions and monitor video feed for the caneholder.

CarrotCane was awarded 1st Place Overall at TinoHacks II in 2018!
AudiSea is an ocean whose waves sync up to the beats of whatever music is playing, letting the user sea the music they're listening to. It also has fish and dolphins that appear periodically in sync with the music. We also added voice recognition to allow the user to play their music hands-free by integrating our app with Spotify.

AudiSea was awarded 4th Place Overall at MenloHacks III!
Aegis is an interactive virtual reality self-defense simulation, focused on educating its users on how to deal with dangerous situations involving another person. We wanted to spread awareness about self defense and educate people on techniques so they would have a better chance of escape should they ever end up in such a situation. In the future, we'd like to add more scenarios and refine the animations to give a smoother learning experience.

Aegis was created as a part of BaseHacks 3.
The perfect platform to encourage collaboration and learning in a safe environment by facilitating book and supply exchanges at school.

HotSwap won 4th place overall as well as best .TECH website for PioneerHacks 2018!
Responsive cross-platform app which intelligently generates schedules to help you stay focused on your homework!

HoneyDue won the award for best .TECH website in Firebird Hacks 2017!
Instead of walking with a cane or some other aid, visually impaired people walk around with their phone with Aspicio running. The lightweight app built with angular takes constant pictures and connects to a python based server to analyze the photos. With the use of powerful GPU's in the cloud, the image is processed almost instantly and sent back to the phone which gives vibration and sound feedback if an obstacle is there.

Aspicio was developed for MVHacks 2017.

Hi there! I'm Ben, a student at UC Berkeley pursuing Computer Science and Psychology.

Currently, I am focusing on web development and am proficient in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, TypeScript, JQuery, and Angular. I am about to begin a project where I hope to familiarize myself with React. I also enjoy game development and digital art.

I'm also frequently involved in local hackathons and coding events- I've been to 8, created award-winning projects at 4, and have organized one of my own. In my adventures, I've also cofounded Bananium Labs, a nonprofit that provides support to help fellow aspiring student developers get started with their own projects.

Every summer, I do a complete website redesign! This is my second website (you can view last year's if your curious over here).