About

Games

My favourite genres are cRPGs (especially the early Fallouts), Rhythm games (like Thumper and Bit Trip Runner), weird games (Mu Cartographer, Vesper5, Hyperrogue), and City-Builders (like Anno, Per Aspera).
I also have a deep but still distant fascination with grand-strategy and deep simulation games like Dwarf Fortress and Paradox Games.
That said, I enjoy almost all kinds of games and sample widely, from spectacle fighters, to logic puzzle games, to rogue-likes, to platformers and everything in between. I am mostly an explorer and my favourite games (to play and to create) are usually flawed but brave and genuine in trying to break new ground.
I care especially about how the different elements of a game fit together; writing-wise, I find it crucially important how the narrative relates to player action, which often goes ignored.

Some of my biggest influences (as a game developer, but also extending beyond it) are: Jonas Kyratzes, Michael Brough, Loren Schmidt, Devine Lu Linvega, Edmund Mcmillen, Will Wright (Vlambeer and Derek Yu get a lot of credit for when I was just starting out!).

Here's my resume and my Master's Thesis on the computational complexity of video games.

I've also written game reviews (focused on game design) for SaveOrQuit.com in the past (as well as many dozens on Steam, but they are by now too diluted).

Books

Aside from games, I am also a very avid reader. It's part of my routine, sometimes for pure enjoyment, sometimes for research (for games or something else), something just to broaden my horizons.
Everything from evolutionary biology/psychology, to history, to mathematics, to biographies, to sci-fi (Le Guin and Greg Egan being particular favourites!), to epic poetry (from the Iliad to th Aeneid, to Beowulf, to El Cid, to Martin Fierro, to a retelling of the Ramayana because the Indian epics are waaay too long haha, etc.), to folk tales, to japanese literature (Soseki and Kawabata are especially dear to me), to Borges, and everything in between. Depending on my mood and my interests at the time. Perhaps one day I'll set up a digital library (I do like to look back and see what tickled my fancy at specific periods over the years).

Music

I play the electric guitar, mostly, though I also dabble into other instruments (I've got a dobro slide guitar, a Shakuhachi, a violin and a keyboard, to name a few; the collection stopped growing once I started to lean towards nomadism...).
I am grounded in classic and progressive rock/metal, but I have a fairly eclectic taste (from hindustani classical music, to klezmer, to norse/slavic folk, etc. etc.).
Proud to have participated in the Freak Guitar Camp with the mad Mattias "IA" Eklundh. A week of sleeping in the woods reciting "tadikidatom" followed by a week of dreaming of "takita takita ta", strongly recommended.

Cyclo-touring

I've recently discovered how enjoyable it is to raggedly travel on an old bicycle with only a tent and a sleeping bag.
I've taken a couple of short-tours (3/4 days) in Portugal and a week-long tour in Sweden.
I also take fairly long rides into the woods and hills on the weekends to clear my mind.