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, and blogger.Road To The IGF: Bit Blot's Aquaria
gamasutra.com, October 23, 2006 Yu has designed and co-designed several award-winning games, most famously '' Spelunky'', '' Aquaria'', and '' Eternal Daughter''.4cr Interview - Derek Yu
4colorrebellion.com, September 30, 2005 He is also notable as a blogger and custodian of the influential TIGSource blog/community about independent video 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 microprocess ...

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 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 practical disciplines (includin ...

, 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 ''I'm O.K – A Murder Simulator'' is a 2006 freeware video game developed by Derek Yu, Chris Hanson, Philippe Jones, Alec Holowka and Christopher Howard Wolf. It was created as a satirical response to a challenge by anti-video game-violence acti ...

'' with

Alec Holowka Alec Holowka (30 October 1983 – 31 August 2019) was a Canadian indie game developer and co-founder of independent game companies Infinite Ammo, Infinite Fall, and Bit Blot. He was mainly known for the award-winning titles ''Night in the Wood ...

and two others, in response to Jack Thompson's "

A Modest Video Game Proposal "A Modest Video Game Proposal" is the title of an open letter sent by activist/former attorney Jack Thompson to members of the press and to Entertainment Software Association president Doug Lowenstein on October 10, 2005. He proposed that, if som ...

", 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 ''Aquaria'' is a side-scrolling action-adventure game designed by Alec Holowka and Derek Yu, who published the game in 2007 as the independent game company Bit Blot. The game follows Naija, an aquatic humanoid woman, as she explores the underw ...

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 '' Spelunky'', propelling Yu's work to the wider mainstream for the first time. A sequel, '' Spelunky 2'', 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 g ...

''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