United by our mission – divided by geography. We're a small remote-first studio in Aotearoa, New Zealand, backed by great advisors and tech.
Eight-year-old Joe remembers fighting over who got to be the Helicopter in Silkworm on Amiga with his best friend. And then losing in a glorious cacophony of co-op play.
Q: What early gaming experience sticks out in your memory?
A: Going to my best buddy's house to play on his Amiga. Whether it was Silkworm, Zoom, or TMNT, my favourite thing was to team up with my friend and try to win together.
Q: Could you share a couple of career highlights?
A: Sure!
Q: What is one thing you've learned about making games with AI?
A: There are unmet needs for creativity and expression in players, and AI is a perfect way to give players something fresh and rewarding.
Q: What do you hope AI will bring to games in the future?
A: A sense of collaboration, empowerment, and creativity, where more players are co-creating the games they play with developers.
Q: What gaming superpower would you choose?
A: The ability to try, learn, fail, and try again, all with grace! (I'm looking at you, Zagreus!)
1988: Nine-year-old Tim sketches the design for a multiplayer, networked point-and-click adventure at his family's kitchen table.
1988: Nine-year-old Tim sketches the design for a multiplayer, networked point-and-click adventure at his family's kitchen table.
Tim never did get that phone call from LucasArts. But he has gone on to ship over a dozen games, including, yes, two point-and-click adventures. He co-founded acclaimed mobile studio Launching Pad Games, and created the killer app for Magic Leap, in collaboration with Weta Workshop.
Tim and his wife practise "Minecraft-based parenting", where their four children learn potty training, talking, and Minecraft in a flexible order.
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Games were scarce in Luke’s childhood home, so he built his own using Q-BASIC. His first text adventure was gleefully deadly. He was hooked.
Games were scarce in Luke’s childhood home, so he built his own using Q-BASIC. His first text adventure was gleefully deadly. He was hooked.
Luke remains fascinated by crafting tiny worlds and bringing them to life. Starting out as a programmer, he soon switched focus to design. He has since built a career as a design generalist and leader shipping titles like Adventure Xpress and Into the Dead 2.
Co-op is a mantra for Luke, in work and play, so he’s pumped to put this into practice every day at 2UP Games.
Steffi's game development career started at ten, with a text adventure centred on avoiding the teachers in the school building while skipping lessons.
Steffi's game development career started around age ten, when her dad taught her how to make simple BASIC programs on the C64. Her first (never finished, of course) text adventure centred on avoiding the teachers in the school building while skipping lessons.
After several years of free-to-play development experience at Gameforge and Flaregames in Germany, then freelancer and cloud architect for several gaming companies, karma made her move across the world to Wellington, NZ to be a backend developer at Magic Leap.
Now, between being a mobile indie on her own, she supports 2UP (which includes the only person she knows that has more played hours on Plants vs Zombies) with backend dev and Dev-Ops.
From the seaside salt-air haze of Windang Australia, fed on a typical 80s/90s cultural diet of pulpy comics, VHS and Saturday morning cartoons, connector pens and garbage pail kids stickers, Ross’ artistic pursuits emerged.
From the seaside salt-air haze of Windang Australia, fed on a typical 80s/90s cultural diet of pulpy comics, VHS and Saturday morning cartoons, connector pens and garbage pail kids stickers, Ross’ artistic pursuits emerged.
Gaming was a large part of his formative years too. Earthworm Jim, Monkey Island and Worms stand out in his memory, but apple juice-fuelled Bubble Bobble marathons with his cousin David, overheating the console and laughing like morons is where his journey into co-op games began.
He launched his profession working as an illustrator with comics and magazines, shirt designs and children’s books, and as the world outside called he spent a decade working in London. Between hanging out in pubs he worked for web and mobile game studios Mind Candy, Bossa, Gumbug and Voodoo.
Ross is now based in Sydney, and when he’s not working on games he’s found making comics, crate digging for vinyl records and hunting desperately for the best dumplings in the world.
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Weber is a full-stack engineer. His goal at 2UP Games? Keep lagginess away.
Weber likes singing and making creative things. He's also been making games after graduated from uni. His goal at 2UP Games? Keep lagginess away.
A fullstack engineer who can solve any problem, Weber has previously worked at ARA Journeys, Honeyvision and Scarlett City Studios.
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Meet James, the playful and passionate game enthusiast. Since his earliest encounters with video games, running floppy disks in DOS prompt, James has been captivated by the magic of interactive experiences.
Meet James, the playful and passionate game enthusiast. Since his earliest encounters with video games, running floppy disks in DOS prompt and uncovering gems like 'Commander Keen,' 'Crystal Caves,' and 'Paganitzu,' James has been captivated by the magic of interactive experiences.
What began as a fascination gradually evolved into a deep interest in game development, surpassing his role as a player. As a true generalist, James embraces all facets of game development, recognising that the finest games emerge from a harmonious blend of art, technology, and commerce.
With a background in graphic design and a wealth of experience as a digital media educator and freelance interactive developer for museums, James made his foray into the games industry as a UX designer. However, his versatile skill set has propelled him through various roles, spanning the realms of art, game design, and product management.
For James, problem solving is a joy and collaboration is key. He firmly believes that great teams are the catalysts for crafting extraordinary games. At 2UP Games, James brings his infectious enthusiasm, diverse expertise, and love for collaborative problem solving to create captivating and immersive gaming experiences.
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Calum grew up with an N64, Gameboy Color, and DOS & Windows 3.1, and his experiences with these devices ignited his passion for capturing the wondrously vivid experiences only possible through game creation.
Calum grew up with an N64, Gameboy Color, and DOS & Windows 3.1, and his experiences with these devices ignited and shaped his passion for capturing the artistic expression and wondrously vivid experiences only possible through game creation.
Calum has always had an especially sweet spot for strategy games, with healthy doses of nostalgia for the Ages of Empires and Red Alert series, although Banjo-Kazooie and more recent games like Frostpunk and Disco Elysium are equally beloved. Calum loves all genres and platforms of games; anything that presents elegant design decisions, respects the player’s time, and exudes the love put into it by its creators.
This love combined with his later-found loves of technology & programming, and human-centric design & empathic team processes led Calum to the technical-lead-type roles he now finds himself in.
Before joining 2UP, Calum founded tiny indie studio Cardboard Keep in 2013, joined Immutable as Lead Game Developer in 2018, and worked with Amplitude Studios as a Lead & Expert Programmer throughout 2022.
The best in this industry are spread around the globe. We make sure that geography isn’t a barrier to building an amazing core team. Remote working at 2UP means you will have the latest equipment, at home. It means we will talk online every day, and meet up every few weeks.
We are open to applicants whose time zones overlap with New Zealand. (E.g. Australia and California works. Europe doesn't.)
We’re all about you being you, so you’ll have full autonomy over how you work and some flexibility in when you work. We’re well funded which means you can get good kit and know that you’re financially secure. We also offer stock options to all employees.
