NELS ANDERSON
Nels is probably the only Canadian game developer who was born & raised in Wyoming. Now in Vancouver, he is Sonderlust Studios' Creative Director. He has been making games professionally for over a decade, starting as a gameplay programmer on DeathSpank before joining Klei Entertainment as lead designer on Mark of the Ninja. After finishing Ninja, he left to help start Campo Santo and create Firewatch. His Campo colleagues went on to join Valve while Nels started a new team that would become Sonderlust. He could not imagine being happier than with the team he gets to work with now.
Nels believes systems are the beating heart of games. And those systems can enable a unique collaboration between creators(s) and players. Games can invite their players to develop richer understandings of a complicated system's dynamics with clever metaphor and construction. They can put the player and their decisions at the centre of the experience. They can enable profound agency and plant the seed of empathy. They can empower by posing, "Here are the rules, now what do YOU want to do?" Nels believes Sonderlust's first game can capture these qualities in an exciting new way.
Nels also plays a whole heap of video games, board games, tabletop RPGs and he was really into Netrunner for a while there. He also loves history, baking and to ensure he remains a cartoonish parody of a Vancouverite, he's super into rock climbing, sushi and brews his own kombucha.
FAV GAMES
Thief, Bloodborne, Disco Elysium, Final Fantasy VI, Far Cry 2
PIER-OLIVIER DESBIENS
From the far away lands of Gaspésie, Pier-Olivier now lives in Montréal, where he works as Sonderlust Studios' Environment Artist. He's been working in the industry for the past 6 years on various IP adaptations, original mobile games, and a multiplayer-only PC title. P-O wanted to continue experimenting and working on something new, and when he saw the beautiful work, team dynamic, and values of Sonderlust, he found a team he wanted to be a part of.
Pier-Olivier loves to create colorful and stylized 3D environments to immerse players in the world with the right amount of details and familiarity.
Pier-Olivier loves getting/designing tattoos, going to live music shows way too often, and playing games. He’s also been known to dance rockabilly jive pretty okay!
FAV GAMES
Bloodborne, Shadow of the Colossus, The Legend of Zelda: Windwaker, Metal Gear Solid 3, Night in the Woods, Journey
MATT GAMBELL
Matt originates from across the pond but emigrated to Canada in late 2019 thanks to a rather divisive political campaign in Britain in 2016 that left him foreseeing a future he didn't particularly want to be a part of. Fortunately, he now works in Vancouver as Sonderlust Studios's resident Developer/Designer and assists the team members wherever possible.
Matt has been working in the games and film industry since he graduated university in 2013. In this time, he has directed and released two feature-length films, designed and developed a number of his own games, and worked as an Online Trainer at Unity Technologies. After leaving Unity, Matt continued work contracting as a freelancer and working on his own games, where he continued to build his generalist skillset. Eventually, inspired somewhat by his old job, he started a YouTube channel where he presented his findings as a developer, and set out to create informative and entertaining tutorials as "Game Dev Guide."
Matt loves solving problems and loves being able to get stuck into both design and development aspects of games. His history as a filmmaker means that he's equally passionate about story-telling and narrative as he is systems and gameplay. Aside from talking passionately about games, he has a love for social psychology, movies, comedy and an almost overwhelming affection for ska music.
FAV GAMES
SimCity series / Cities Skylines, Theme Hospital, Persona 5, Yakuza Series, Final Fantasy X
MARRI KNADLE
Marri was raised in cloudy, quaint Victoria B.C., later pursuing a Master's degree in the history of medicine, of all things. They are now Narrative Lead at Sonderlust Studios.
After their post-graduate studies, they worked at a pharmaceutical industry eLearning company where they copy edited medical texts, designed gamified education modules, and used Twine to write interactive conversation models for soft skills training. (Like a branching dating sim, but for closing medical devices deals instead of landing a date.) After completing the Pixelles Writing Incubator, they joined Ubisoft Montreal and worked as a writer on Far Cry 5, Far Cry: New Dawn, and Far Cry 6.
Marri loves rich worldbuilding and character-focused stories that provide evocative, emotional memories for players.
You can find them playing D&D with their friends, goading those same friends into co-op horror games, cooking (and eating), worldbuilding and writing, and occasionally drawing.
FAV GAMES
Dance Dance Revolution, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Elden Ring, Yakuza 0, Nier: Automata, Outer Wilds, 80 Days, Shadow of the Colossus
STEVE CHUBATY
Steve loves making things that people love, learning and building skills, and playing games with friends.
Born and raised in Winnipeg, the glorious land of potholes and honey dill. Where the weather is like the drivers… it can’t pick a lane. He’s loved games ever since he’s had the ability to form memories, and has had the drive to make them just as long. He’s worked toward that goal in some form or another his entire life, and now here he is living the dream in Vancouver!
Steve loves to bring people together and regularly plans events for his local gamedev community, and much of what he does is grounded in creating engaging social experiences.
He finds many, many things interesting and must experience them all. Whether it’s playing sports, cooking, dancing, or attempting to create the perfect kitchen experience, there just isn’t enough time in a day to cover it all for Steve!
FAV GAMES
All the board games, Magic: The Gathering, Elden Ring, Rocket League, Super Smash Bros, Chrono Trigger, Endless series, Harvest Moon, Undertale
KARLA ZIMONJA
Karla Zimonja is a Masshole by birth. She has marked more than 20 years in the game industry, working on such projects as Asheron’s Call, Zoo Tycoon 2, BioShock 2 (and its DLC Minerva’s Den), Gone Home, and Tacoma. She started out as an animator on Dr. Katz and Home Movies before being subsumed into games, eventually moving through a series of weird, poorly-titled positions to become a mishmash of skills and knowledge. Fortunately this gives decent stat bonuses in small indie companies, especially those which are design-centric and narratively substantial.
Karla puts most of her spare energy into her friends' D&D games (and sometimes other tabletop games), lifts the odd weight, reads less and watches fewer movies than she wants to. She's a sucker for the Pacific Northwest, a good woody perfume, post-punk and second-wave ska, and leather jacket weather.
FAV GAMES
Grim Fandango, Sam & Max Hit the Road, various Disgaeas, Ghost Trick, Dishonored, Gorogoa, The Return of the Obra Dinn, Night in the Woods, Disco Elysium
TARIK TAKASU
From São Paulo, Brazil, Tarik started studying art and games after having not a great time studying Economics and quitting college. Over the last six years as a 3D Artist, he has gone from boardgame miniatures to the advertisement industry and then into video games. Through some variety of companies and some half-developed games he landed on Sonderlust, where he found a home and is now helping the team create characters and be a small piece in the puzzle that is bringing a video game into existence.
Tarik is usually found cycling between playing Magic: The Gathering Arena, Path of Exile, and brooding over the thought that there’s no more Zachtronics games being released.
FAV GAMES
Fallout: New Vegas, Dwarf Fortress, Disco Elysium, Magic: the Gathering, Path of Exile, Katamari Damacy, Earthbound
GINDA SUN
Ginda hails from the rarely recognized suburb of Wilmington, Delaware, and is now based in San Francisco as Sonderlust’s technical animator. After studying animation for film, she stumbled into the game industry through an e-learning job and never looked back. In the past 6 years, she’s worn many art-related hats at small game studios. As an indie game enthusiast, she’s honoured to be a part of the Sonderlust team and thrilled for their first title.
Ginda loves learning new art tools (and a bit of coding!) when she’s not rigging or animating. In her non-digital time, you can find her shopping for cheese and doing handicrafts like wood carving, crochet and sewing.
FAV GAMES
Hades, Don’t Starve Together, League of Legends, Death’s Door, Ori and the Blind Forest, Mini Motorways
CURTIS HIMEL
Curtis grew up in New Orleans and recently moved to Vancouver with his wife after a decade in Seattle. He’s worked on multiple games, including BattleTech and The Lamplighters League at Harebrained Schemes. He now works with smart and fun people on Sonderlust’s engineering team.
Having worked on many different projects (both games and non-games), Curtis often thinks about responsible uses of technology vs because-we-can uses of technology. Engineering ethics is not always straightforward, but helping to build a game that strives to delight people while carrying an important ecological / sustainability message feels like good work.
He believes games have power to shape people and open them to new ideas. He remembers being a kid and finding a drive for skill mastery in Super Mario Bros, the joy of exploration in The Legend of Zelda, and the realization of how grand a well-designed world could be in Exile: Escape from the Pit. And now he hopes to use this powerful medium to make the world a slightly better place.
FAV GAMES
Super Metroid, Geneforge: Mutagen, Eliza, Norco, The Messenger, Horizon: Zero Dawn, Final Fantasy VI
NIAMH FITZGERALD
With a name like Niamh, it’s probably not surprising to hear that she's Irish. She lived in Ireland for a number of years before her family moved to New Zealand and then, like many people, had a wandering pathway into games! She has both a programming degree and an art degree, and spent a handful of years working in IT as a project manager and systems designer before finding a home in the games industry. Her most recent and significant role was at Dinosaur Polo Club—makers of Mini Metro and Mini Motorways—where she started as the lead game designer and producer on Mini Motorways, and became the COO and Head of Production as the studio grew over the years. Before that she was a co-founder of a tiny indie studio called Little Lost Fox making premium mobile games, and was on the board of the New Zealand Game Developers Association for a couple of years where she was responsible for organising the country's largest games event, the New Zealand Game Developers Conference.
Niamh loves helping people and is often involved in youth education workshops, speaking at gamedev events, or participating in mentorship programs. She’s delighted to now be working with such an incredible team at Sonderlust Studios, and to be able to help them create and ship their first game together!
She doesn’t play as many games as she’d like to, but can often be found reading, playing DnD, spending time with friends, and travelling to new places.
FAV GAMES
Stardew Valley, Final Fantasy VII, Pokemon Yellow, Beat Saber, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
