My name is Ryan Thorlakson. I love nothing more than programming and developing video games!

School
I graduated from DigiPen Institute of Technology in 2006 as valedictorian of my graduating class. I earned a bachelor's degree in Real-Time Interactive Simulation (similar to Computer Science) and a minor in Mathematics. While at DigiPen, I created five full-featured game projects by working in small teams. You can find these projects on this site! While in school, I also created my own free browser-based persistent web game, Teragaia, on the side.

Justice League Heroes
I then worked at Snowblind Studios on Justice League Heroes as an AI/gameplay programmer. I programmed most of the boss encounters in the game and made many other contributions to the project.

Unannounced Action-RPG
After Justice League Heroes shipped, I worked on Snowblind's unannounced next-gen action-RPG. I created a modular, data-driven AI system from the ground up so that designers could create intricate AI behaviors without programmer help. I also worked on many different areas of gameplay. Eventually I became the acting gameplay programming lead. I mentored other programmers, organized schedules, kept track of outstanding issues, coordinated with other departments, assisted in interviews, fought the big fires, made sure deliverables were ready to go, and more.

Light's End
After I left Snowblind in 2008, it was time to really express my creativity. I spent seven months creating my own independent game called Light's End for Microsoft's Xbox 360. I published the game through Xbox Live Community Games. I did all of the programming, design, music, dialog, and promotion. I contracted the raw artwork through an artist from deviantART. Other than the artist's help, I was the only developer on the project.

And More
I recently became a member of American Mensa, which is a high-IQ society only open to those scoring in the top 2% on a standardized IQ test. I was also a winner of ThinkFun's 36 Cube Contest in which I was one of the first people in the world to correctly solve their incredibly challenging puzzle. I wrote a program to help me solve it, but a program alone wasn't enough. It was definitely necessary to think outside the box!

Job Search
I am currently searching for a programming position in the interactive entertainment industry. My ideal job would offer plenty of challenges and opportunities for creativity. It would allow me to create efficient and user-friendly systems to solve difficult problems. My greatest programming joy is creating interesting systems, and then maintaining these systems by responding to feedback from users or players.

Welcome!
Take a look around my site. You will find information about games I have worked on, actual game downloads, other game related projects, code samples, and my résumé. Soon you will see first hand that I like to get my feet wet with all aspects of video game development. I hope you enjoy my site and projects as much as I enjoyed creating them!