Maker. Problem solver. Digital creator.

I’ve been building software freelance since my teens. I cover the whole stack: design, frontend, backend, databases, and the servers everything runs on. Self-hosted, Dockerized, and maintained by me.

Website + customer portal

EBE Energieberatung

Company website plus a customer portal with document management for an independent energy consultancy. Built, deployed and operated end to end.

Internal software, no public screenshots

Internal tool

Lisa Wöll GmbH

A bespoke customer management system: client data, workflows and day-to-day operations in one place, tailored to how the company actually works.

Websites

Smaller sites & references

A long tail of websites for small businesses and projects: fast, accessible, and easy to maintain. References available on request.

I co-founded Spoonful, a Cologne studio for wholesome games, and ran it as CEO for years: four founders at the start, a team of ten at its peak, usually with several projects in production at once. We shipped on Steam, consoles, mobile and browser. Spoonful has been on ice for the past months, and I’m currently setting up a new studio, bonites. Small games, big hearts, sharp teeth. Along the way I also taught game programming at the Cologne Game Lab.

The common thread through most of it: games that take a stance. I like work that has an opinion, built for democracy education, media literacy, accessibility, and museum spaces.

Releases

2025 CEO & production, Spoonful

Bauhaus Bonk

54 Bauhaus-inspired arcade levels and exactly one button. Pivot, spin, bonk, chase the global high score. Sitting at "Very Positive" on Steam.

• GDD Indie Award 2026: Best Game Mechanics & Best Sound (winner)
• Deutscher Computerspielpreis 2025: nominated
• Deutscher Entwicklerpreis 2025: nominated

SteamApp StoreGoogle Play

2025 Project lead & lead programmer, Spoonful

Treffpunkt Freiheit

A networked multiplayer game at the heart of "Spielräume Demokratie", the permanent exhibition at the LVR-Industriemuseum in Solingen. Visitors meet virtual conversation partners and negotiate what freedom actually means. Democracy education you can walk into.

Exhibition page

2025 Project lead, Spoonful for TH Köln

Beyond the Chalkboard

A point-and-click adventure about studying with a mental illness. You play student Sam through three days of exams, group work and anxiety. Built to help lecturers and universities dismantle barriers. I led the project: all of the gameplay design, much of the writing, half the programming, and the management holding it together.

Play in browserTH Köln project page

2024 Project management & programming lead, Spoonful

Join the Comfortzone

A decision-making adventure set in an authoritarian near-future, built for civic education with Jugendstiftung Baden-Württemberg and PH Freiburg. Nine endings, one school lesson, no easy answers. I managed the project, led the programming, and voiced one of the characters.

• TOMMI Kindersoftwarepreis 2024: 3rd place

Project pagePlay in browser

2021 Sole programmer & gameplay design

Aerial_Knight's Never Yield

A soundtrack-driven 3D runner through a futuristic Detroit, released on PC, PlayStation, Xbox and Switch. I wrote all of the game's code and tuned how running, sliding and dashing feel.

SteamHeadup Games

2021 Writer: dialogue & texts

Welten der Werkstoffe

A point-and-click adventure that teaches materials science at TH Köln: complete the game, earn exam credit. I wrote the dialogue for a 20-person team production.

• Deutscher Computerspielpreis 2021: Best Serious Game
• Landeslehrpreis NRW

Play in browserDCP archive

More credits

• 

  Lese-Detektor 2026 · Voice: Rudi the rat

  A reading-training app for grades 1–4 by Sterntaler Lernspiele: kids power a marvelous reading machine by telling true sentences from nonsense. I voice Rudi, the rat scientist.

  App StoreGoogle Play

• 

  KryptoKids und das geheime Netzwerk 2023 · Additional writing

  A free browser adventure on democracy education and extremism prevention for ages 10 to 14, made by the Fachstelle für Jugendmedienkultur NRW and funded by the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung. The fjmk team drafted the game's text and hired me to shape it into its final form.

  krypto-kids.dePlay in browser

• 

  Virtuelle Zeitreise ins Jahr 2050 2021 · Voice

  A four-player free-roam VR trip through Nuremberg in 2050, built by the Cologne Game Lab for the Deutsches Museum Nürnberg. Around 22,000 visitors played it in the first year. I voiced Jaque.

  TH Köln project page

Coming up

Free to play from November 2026

Merkmal: Radikal!

A cooperative multiplayer browser game (3–5 players, ages 12+) that trains players to recognize right-wing radical strategies on social media. Media literacy and civic courage as game mechanics, built with Studio Zweisiedlerkrebs.

merkmal-radikal.de

I do voice work for games; the microphone training comes from years of live performance. Most recently I became Rudi, the rat scientist in the reading app Lese-Detektor. Before that I voiced Jaque in the VR time machine at the Deutsches Museum Nürnberg and a character in Join the Comfortzone. The voice also shows up in video: my animated explainer film „Datenschutz – Fast wie Sex” was a finalist for the Datenschutz Medienpreis (DAME) in 2018.

Before games: a decade on stage

From 2008 to 2019 I performed as a Poetry Slam artist and cabaret act: three-time state champion of Sachsen-Anhalt, finalist at the German-language Poetry Slam championships, and winner of Munich’s Kabarett Kaktus. My solo programs live.exe and Bitte was!? toured nationally, an appearance on ZDF Kultur’s Poetry Slam included, and some of it is preserved in the nerd-slam anthology Das Slamperium schlägt zurück (Lektora, 2014). On the side I ran workshops and wrote commissioned pieces for clients from Bosch and TH Köln to Jeunesse Musicale, plus more youth centers and school halls than I kept count of. That chapter closed in 2019, but it built most of what I still use daily: writing, presence, and a working microphone voice.

The first thing I ever built was a recording studio, as a teenager, for a rap career that mercifully stayed a hobby. The habit stuck: woodworking, electrics and plumbing, an off-grid solar setup in its second iteration, and the slow modernization of a small forest cabin. Same discipline as software: understand the system, respect the material, ship something that holds.

Closer to home, I volunteer as a registered Nachbarschaftshelfer, looking after elderly neighbors in my building. I’m also a member of the Arbeiter-Samariter-Bund (ASB), and I’ve been a member of the Left Party (Die Linke) for years. Community work and taking a political stand have quietly become some of the most important things I do.

The tools that keep showing up, whether the project is a portal, a game, a museum room, or a cabin in the woods:

• TypeScript / JavaScript / C#
• React & Node
• Unity & game design
• PostgreSQL / Redis
• Docker, Traefik, Linux servers
• Narrative design & writing
• Voice acting
• Dangerous levels of Excel

Quite possibly the only person to have won both the Kabarett Kaktus and the Deutscher Computerspielpreis. Both worlds, one ledger:

For web and app projects, voice work, a good idea, or a question:

kontakt@tomschildhauer.de

For game-studio matters, head to bonites.de.

Professional profile: LinkedIn