I’m Tynan Sylvester, game designer, founder of Ludeon Studios and creator of RimWorld.

I started Ludeon and built the first version of RimWorld by myself in 2013 with no outside funding. Since then, Ludeon has grown to span the globe, the game has sold over 4 million copies, and we’ve released five major expansions. The game has an active community with 500,000 members on the RimWorld subreddit and tens of thousands of mods on Steam Workshop.

I wrote an instructional game design book called Designing Games. It was published in 2013 by O’Reilly Media. The book is an attempt at understanding the emotional heart of games in a way that’s useful to game designers.

I previously worked as a level and systems designer at Irrational Games in Boston, primarily on BioShock Infinite. I also did contract level design for Epic Games’ Unreal Tournament, Digital Extremes’ Warpath, and Groove Games’ Close Quarters Conflict. Before that, I created many Unreal Tournament levels, with several winning cash awards. I also started a total conversion mod for UT2004 called Elemental Conflict and led a team developing it for about 14 months.

Talks I’ve done:

• Interview with Dean Takahashi along with Owen Mahoney, Bing Gordon and Mitch Lasky
• RimWorld GDC 2019 presentation
• I delivered talks at Ottawa International Game Conference 2013 and at Dirty Rectangles in Ottawa.

Articles I’ve written:

• The Simulation Dream (2013)
• The Design Landscape (2012)

Some other early articles from the archives:

• Compulsion Engineers (2008)
• On Scaffolding and Masonry (2008)
• Decision-Based Gameplay Design (2005)
• Style and Substance in Game Design (2005)

See my Twitter.

Contact: Email