Ryan Hughes

Video games became so much more than just a hobby for me very early on. There's just no other medium like it. One day you're playing a deeply gripping interactive story, the next you're locked into tight, super engaging gameplay mechanics, or even just relaxing with a simple incremental game that scratches that exact spot in the monkey brain where "number go up." Being in a position where we get to create our own games at Shiverbug is such a privilege, and I love being able to give other players those same thrilling, memorable experiences.

Growing up, though, I played Call of Duty: Zombies almost every single day. I was completely fascinated by a bonus mode that almost didn't even make the cut in World at War. On the surface it looks simple: wave after wave of zombies, each one longer than the last, and you buy weapons off the wall or gamble on the Mystery Box to stay ahead of them.

But once you look a little deeper, you realise just how much is packed under the surface. There's a massive, universe-spanning storyline hidden behind intricate main quest Easter eggs, radio logs, and cryptic ciphers, some of which literally took the community over ten years to solve. Balancing that deep puzzle-solving with having to constantly adapt your survival strategy on the fly just to make it to the next round on the leaderboards was pure magic, and it's a huge reason I view game design the way I do today.