Aloft Studio

Aloft studio is a small collaborative group founded in 2013, with 2 major product releases currently being developed.

Team actively working on Hazelnut Bastille are:

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Dennis Varvaro, age 31, does Art, Design, Writing, and Community media and Marketing for Aloft. 

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He is a long-time student of Game Design Theory, and a life-long gamer with high reverence for the great productions of the early 90's.He has been involved in the indie game development and protoyping scene for around 7 years. He is the holder of a Professional-Bachelor's degree in Architecture from the University of Notre Dame with an emphasis on historic and traditional design. He has done work in classically-oriented architecture and landscape architecture firms on the US east coast and in Belgium, and has contributed to historic architectural survey work for the Prince's Foundation. He is also an adept at several commercial game engines and computer modeling suites, and an amateur musician and composer.

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Mark Harbaugh, age 31, does Code, Prototyping, Scripting, and Design for Aloft. 

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He has been writing code for over 13 years now, and is fluent in C#, C++, Javascript, HTML, PHP, Actionscript, GML, and Clojure, as well as Assembly and Machine language. For almost as long, he has been putting those skills to work prototyping around a dozen of his own game concepts. Mark pursues game development as a way of balancing his interest and proficiency in computer science with his strong creative impulse. He has a great love for the idea of games as a vehicle for storytelling and world building, as well as a careful hand for the minutia of a functional game structure. Mark is a long-time student of the mechanics of classic-era game engines, and their common solutions, and brings this knowledge to bear in invoking the feel of these great titles by learning from their solutions.

Shannon Mason, (AKA "Pongball"), age 35, is joining us as a composer for Hazelnut Bastille.

She is a lifelong composer who has worked on indie and casual mobile games for around 7 years. Shannon writes in a wide range of musical styles, but has found a particular niche in the romanticism of the 16 bit era. Through her close understanding of the writing techniques and character of the time, she has managed to create a sound which is a direct continuation of the lineage of the great 16 bit soundtracks, rather than merely an imitation of them. 

Samples of past work can be found at:  https://soundcloud.com/pongball  

Also working with Aloft, on the Sticks and Starships project, is:

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Chris Bolton, age 32, does Code, Engine Design, Prototpying, and Scripting for Aloft.

is the holder of a Bachelor's of Computer Science, and is an experienced team member with 10 years of engine deisgn experience. He has extensive knowledge in a multitude of computational theories, and with it, has tackled a variety of independent roles in the software development industry including the implementation, debugging, and maintenance of various systems for core engines, games, and tools. He has a strong past game industry experience working on cross-platform games and was responsible for designing, developing, and deploying core technology for independent developers. He is also an expert at module assembly, game-physics construction, and environmental rendering. He brings to the project over a decade of C++, C#, Java, and Lua-script coding, among many other languages.

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