Hi, I’m David
I’m the “lead developer” of TigerByte Games, which is to say the only person involved in this insanity. I work as a software analyst and developer in the public service sector, and I received my formal training in IT Project Management from Davenport University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. This website and any projects I put up here represent what I do in my limited spare time. I have a full-time job, a family, and an increasingly difficult-to-suppress urge to change my name to Alfonso, disappear somewhere into Central or South America, start a hobby farm and sit around smoking expensive Cuban cigars all day.
Influences
I enjoy fantasy and sci-fi books and media, and I’ve been heavily inspired in my creative life by Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Dune, Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere and The Dark Tower, among numerous other Stephen King works. At one point I had a strong desire to become an author and tried my hand at several novels, but I came to realise I wasn’t interested in making writing a full-time commitment. Thankfully I’ve also long wanted to create games, and I’m fine with my work being derivative as long as I can still create interesting, unique worlds and situations and have fun doing it. If I can make something mechanically interesting that lets people experience some of the wonder of visiting a new world and spending many hours building and making things in it, that’s a goal worth pursuing.
I grew up during the “Golden Age” of gaming. My first consoles were an Atari and a Nintendo, followed by the SNES, probably my all-time favourite system. I spent many hours on Sid Meier’s Civilization, Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI. I still hold the aesthetic of that era and my love of JRPGs close, although when I do manage to play games these days they’re far more likely to be strategy or base-building titles I can sink hundreds of hours into, such as Rimworld or Crusader Kings.
Cult: Awakening of the Old Ones
Over a decade ago I attempted to create a game called Cult: Awakening of the Old Ones and ran a successful Kickstarter campaign. It was built primarily in Python on top of the libtcod roguelike library. At the time I didn’t understand what I was getting myself into. I had big dreams about what the game could become, I was fascinated by procedural generation, and I ended up promising a grab-bag of incredibly complex mechanics that I wanted to implement over a decades-long period à la Tarn Adams of Dwarf Fortress fame. I simply didn’t have a strong enough grasp of coding or the game development process to pull it off, and worse, because I began the project in Python, I ran into insurmountable performance hurdles. I was eventually forced to cancel the project and spent the next several years refunding every backer who asked, because I did not want to be memorialised as another Kickstarter creator who “took the money and ran”.
How Into the Drift is made
Into the Drift has been in my head, in one form or another, since not long after Cult. I’ve started it more than once over the years. The challenge has always been finding time to build the game I want alongside a full-time job and a family. I’m working on it a piece at a time, playing and testing as I go.
I built the original codebase myself. The world, story and game design are mine, and I spend much of my development time testing, tuning and fixing things. The main character sprites were drawn by hand; other artwork includes assets bought with commercial licences and pieces I’ve made or edited myself.
Life
I have a beautiful wife and a precocious, adorable daughter who’s quickly growing up and becoming much smarter than daddy was at the same age. My wife is a Taiwanese national and I would very much like to move to Taiwan one day. It’s a gorgeous country with an incredibly rich culture, highly developed cities and some of the best food you’ll find anywhere in the world. It’s also a great place for very long runs if you enjoy mountain views.
I like dogs and cats but not their fur. I have a pet bunny named Spirit. I was born in 1986 and I believe in keeping an open mind, admitting mistakes and trying not to be so selfish in a culture where selfishness is often enshrined as the norm. I am not always good at this. I drink way too much coffee.