The Ember Conflict was the two year project of Substantial Games, my home in Beijing. Our CTO YJ Park changed the way I thought about coding, being something like a tech version of Shigeru Miyamoto; if ever you are settled into thinking one idea is best, Park could be relied on to show you how many things you hadn’t considered.

People were constantly impressed with how great our game looked; testament to the skill of Daniel Arnold-Mist and his team (artist Diego Candia and animator Kenneth Greenblatt) as well as Pin Wang’s modern UI designs. Although we gained many hardcore fans we did not achieve the traction necessary for ‘escape velocity’ and went our separate ways in 2015. Having now moved back to Europe I have been picketing everyone to move West ever since.