Meet the Team: Part 1

We're beginning a new series of posts: Meet the Team! Every few days we'll make a new post to give you a better look at the people behind Tortuga Games and A Pirate's Life.

Let's start with the head honcho, or more appropriately our dutiful captain, Louis Van Dyke. Louis' influence on the game covers every stage of development. He holds the positions of head designer, programmer and all round spiritual guide.

After playing and loving Nintendo games such as Animal Crossing and Zelda for the majority of his life, Louis has found a way to channel these influences (plus whatever goes on in his brain) by developing games; often as an homage to the games he loved as a child.
Thus the birth of A Pirate's Life was brought about from the loins of Louis' imagination!

When he is not working on the game, Louis is a collector of retro games. He's beaten every Mega Man game on the NES (without cheats, he swears) and proudly owns every installment of the Zelda main series.

Louis focuses most of his gaming time towards indie games. He has fallen in love with the unique boldness that independently developed games tend to have and is passionate about supporting them for it. Lately, he's particularly enjoying playing Minecraft (which means he helped Notch buy his sweet mansion), Hotline Miami (he listens to the soundtrack on repeat as he programs) and of course, Animal Crossing (which he says is mostly for research).

If it wasn't for Louis, A Pirate's Life would not exist and the Tortuga Games' team members would never have had the opportunity to get together every week and have tons of fun game jamming! He is our leader and every member of the Tortuga crew would be happy to sail across the Seven Seas under his command!