Programming Portfolio Games

What you provide along with your CV greatly depends on the job you are going for. I'm assuming (from the content of your OP) that you wish to apply for an entry level programming position (I'll ignore specific area's like physics programming, AI etc., as most entry level positions are quite generic).

You do not have to provide an all singing, all dancing demo for an entry level position. You game does not have to have the most advance graphics ever seen, or the most original game play you could imagine. It doesn't even have to be 100% feature complete. Of course all these things help, but its the main guts of the game demo thats key.

You need to display to a potential employer that you can understand the flow of a game, that you are aware of the individual components that make a game (input, sound, display, collision etc.), and how they all interact. It is more than possible to do this with a very fancy tetris game (though I would bundle it with other demos), though something more would be a good idea.

An air hockey game is a nice idea (the physics would not be the most important part, and would be quite simple in this situation), add a nice front end (various options, no. players etc.), a decent amount of features, a few fancy particle effects, maybe a high score board that saves across sessions.

I am a bit on the fence regarding tech demos. Tech demos tend to not show your understanding of the game process, just your understanding of a certain technology. This, bundled with a game demo or two, is good, but on its own IMO, is far from good enough. But, if you are interested in a graphics programming position for example, a graphics tech demo would go down very well.

Once the demo games have been looked at, the employer will look at what, IMO, is the most important aspect. Attention to detail.

No dev co. in their right mind would hire someone who's demo is riddled with bug's, crashes or hangs (The odd one is fine, you don't have a whole QA department to give you a hand). This would not make sense, you would cause more problems for the team than solve.

Also, your coding style. Everyone has a different coding style, just like everyone has different hand writting. They would loook for consistant code styles, COMMENTS, reasonable function and variable names... Working in a team where one member calls all vars and functions var1, function2 (and I have worked with ppl like that), is again going to cause more problems than hiring you would solve.

Hope some of that helps. This is a difficult question to answer, as most companies have their own idea's as to what constitues a decent portfolio, and ppl here will disagree with things I have said.

FYI, when I applied for my first entry level position, my demo portfolio comprimised of 3 applications. A simple side scrolling shooter using vector graphics, a bubble-bobble clone (with v. simple cut scenes and voice (not-very-good) acting), and a tool for building simple environments from set shapes and texturing/lighting them.

Spree