Phosphorous, Iikka Keranen & Rich Carlson

Iikka Keranen (design, coding, art) currently works for Valve Software as level designer. He is also a 2D artist, a 3D modeler, a dedicated programmer and a game designer. (Busy guy!) Early on, Iikka programmed several freeware games for the Commodore Amiga and he created the popular Airquake mod as well as over a hundred free add-on levels for Doom and Quake. In recent years he has created 3D architecture and textures for many well known computer games: Daikatana, Anachronox, Thief 2, Alice, Day of Defeat, Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2 and Left4Dead.

Rich Carlson (design, music & sfx, art) was a musician in Minnesota before becoming involved with the game industry. Primarily a keyboardist, he did studio work and performed in bands for over twenty years. Always an avid gamer, Rich was gradually lured away from music during the golden age of gaming in the 80's when he began to tinker with boardgames and rpg's with his friends. Later, he created gobs (over forty) of free Heretic, Doom and Quake levels for internet distribution, a hobby that eventually led to a full time job designing 3D game level architecture for Ion Storm, Looking Glass Studios and other commercial game companies. (Fortunately, he recovered and "went indie" instead of crazy.)

Phosphorous (illustrative art, design) prefers to be anomalous, curiously claiming to be a "psychic force". When asked about his role as a Digital Eel collaborator, Phosphorous rufused to comment stating that it was the wrong question. It is speculated that Phosphorous is a versatile game industry artist who lives some sort of mysterious double life (like Iikka) but this remains unproven. While appearing to reside at Toad Hall, experts (top men) have determined with 89.2% certainty that Phosphorous actually dwells within a universe of his own devising...

Ed Zavada is Digital Eel's resident Mac weenie. He is currently working for Tenderfoot Games on a top secret project, and was a founder of Pixel Dust Games which developed Settlers of Catan for Microsoft. Previously, Ed worked on cool games like Air Warrior and The Sims Online. He continues to develop Galactica: Anno Dominari as a shareware project. If we go back a bit too far we find that Ed once worked as a jackalope rancher in Upper Volta. These days he lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, which was recently nominated Hub of the Universe by some guy who likes to nominate things.

Anyone else you need to know about? Absolutely. The Fearless Testers, among them James Cook, Greg Costikyan, Chris Cummings, Bob Dalgliesh, James Ernest, Thomas & Zoe Flint, Bruce Ladewig, Chris Laskowski, Kevin Matheny, Duncan McPherson, Deanna Molinaro, Joe Pallai, Jim Price, Richard Rouse III, Amy Schrader, Colton Sears, Corbin Sears, Chris Siegel, John Slade, James Sterrett, Brian Uhrig and Thom Wetzel, who take time and great care to help make sure each Digital Eel game is as fun, and as bug free, as it can be.

These fine folks help do a third --and perhaps the most important part-- of what it takes to prepare a new game for release upon an unsuspecting world.