Derek Yu is an American independent

video game designer Video game design is the process of designing the content and rules of video games in the pre-production stage and designing the gameplay, environment, storyline and characters in the production stage. Some common video game design subdiscipline ...

video game artist Game art design is a subset of game development involving the process of creating the artistic aspects for video games. Video game art design begins in the pre-production phase of creating a video game. Video game artists are Visual arts, visua ...

, and

blogger A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order s ...

.Road To The IGF: Bit Blot's Aquaria

gamasutra.com ''Game Developer'', known as ''Gamasutra'' until 2021, is a website founded in 1997 that focuses on aspects of video game development. It is owned and operated by Informa and acts as the online sister publication to the print magazine '' Game ...

, October 23, 2006 Yu has designed and co-designed several award-winning games, most famously ''

Spelunky ''Spelunky'' is a 2008 source-available 2D platform game created by independent developer Derek Yu and released as freeware for Microsoft Windows. It was remade for the Xbox 360 in 2012, with ports of the new version following for various platfo ...

'', '' Aquaria'', and ''

Eternal Daughter ''Eternal Daughter'' is a freeware 2D action-adventure game created by indie developers Derek Yu and Jon Perry and released on June 21, 2002, under the Blackeye Software label. Plot The introduction shows the Dungaga, an imperial industrialized ...

''.4cr Interview - Derek Yu
4colorrebellion.com, September 30, 2005 He is also notable as a blogger and custodian of the influential

TIGSource TIGSource, short for The Independent Games Source, is a news blog and Internet community centered around the creation of independent video games, founded in 2005 by Jordan Magnuson but soon taken over by Derek Yu, both independent game developer ...

blog/community about

independent video games An indie game, short for independent video game, is a video game typically created by individuals or smaller development teams without the financial and technical support of a large game publisher, in contrast to most "AAA" (triple-A) games. ...

. He has been called an "indie superstar" and a "genuine icon" of the video game industry.

Life and career

Yu's first exposure to computer games was an

Atari 2600 The Atari 2600, initially branded as the Atari Video Computer System (Atari VCS) from its release until November 1982, is a home video game console developed and produced by Atari, Inc. Released in September 1977, it popularized microprocessor- ...

when he was a child. Already in second grade, he and a friend started mapping out simple games on paper, later moving on to making text adventures on the PC and eventually using

Klik & Play Clickteam is a French software development company based in Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts-de-Seine. Founded by Francis Poulain, François Lionet and Yves Lamoureux, Clickteam is best known for the creation of Clickteam Fusion, a script-free p ...

to make games. After graduating college with a degree in

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

, Yu moved to San Francisco and worked as a freelance illustrator. In 2007, Yu created satiric run-and-gun freeware game '' I'm O.K – A Murder Simulator'' with Alec Holowka and two others, in response to

Jack Thompson Jack Thompson may refer to: Sports * Jack Thompson (footballer, born 1892) (1892–1969), English footballer who played for Sheffield United and Bristol City * Jack Thompson (1920s footballer), English footballer who played for Aston Villa and Brig ...

's " A Modest Video Game Proposal", an open letter regarding gun violence and violent video games that offered $10,000 to charity if videogame developers would dare to make a game depicting videogame developers being killed. The collaboration with Holowka later led to the formation of the company Bit Blot and the release of '' Aquaria'' in 2008, which was a big success and won the Seumas McNally award at the 2007 IGF. According to Yu, "Not only did ''Aquaria'' sell well enough that lec Holowka and Icould continue making games full time, but the positive feedback we received from players and critics also validated us as artists and helped to put to rest our doubts about whether we were making something worthwhile." However, Bit Blot never produced another title, and the last update to the company's website occurred in 2011. Yu and Holowka lived in separate countries, and Holowka cited the long-distance nature of the collaboration as a source of tension during a 2008 interview. In 2008, Yu released the highly popular and influential roguelike ''

'', propelling Yu's work to the wider mainstream for the first time. A sequel, ''

Spelunky 2 ''Spelunky 2'' is a 2020 platform game, platform video game developed by Mossmouth and BlitWorks. It is the sequel to ''Spelunky'' (2008) and was released for PlayStation 4 and Microsoft Windows, Windows in September 2020, for Nintendo Switch in ...

'', was released in 2020. In 2014, Yu designed the

card game A card game is any game using playing cards as the primary device with which the game is played, be they traditional or game-specific. Countless card games exist, including families of related games (such as poker). A small number of card ...

''Time Barons'' with Jon Perry.

Works

Bibliography

References

External links

Derek Yu's website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Yu, Derek 1982 births Living people American people of Chinese descent Artists from Pasadena, California Video game artists Video game designers Indie video game developers