Maddy Thorson | |
|---|---|
 Thorson in 2021 | |
| Born | 18 March 1988 |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Occupation | Video game developer |
| Notable work | TowerFall , Celeste |
Madeline Stephanie Thorson (born 18 March 1988; formerly known as Matt Thorson) is a Canadian video game developer, known as one of the lead creators for the video games TowerFall and Celeste , developed under the studio Maddy Makes Games (previously Matt Makes Games). Since September 2019, Thorson has worked as Director of R&D at Extremely OK Games.
Madeline Stephanie Thorson [1] was born on 18 March 1988. [2] Thorson went to college at Grande Prairie Regional College in Alberta, Canada, studying computer science, [3] during which one summer she worked at HermitWorks Entertainment, a local video game development studio. [4]
When Thorson was around fourteen, her mother helped her acquire a copy of GameMaker, a software tool to help develop video games. Through working in GameMaker, she was connected to others in online forums who were also interested in making games, including Chevy Ray Johnston. [5] She developed a number of small pay-what-you-want games through GameMaker in high school and through college, [5] including Jumper and several sequels, FLaiL, and An Untitled Story. [6] Several of her games were described as "masocore", masochistic games that were extremely difficult for the player to complete; Thorson felt her goal was not to make her games near-impossible but instead to make games that helped direct the player to improve themselves so that the player could beat the challenges she made for them. [6] Early games were published under the name Helix Games, but in April 2008, she rebranded it as Matt Makes Games, considering the name a more important brand for her work. [4] [7]
Thorson's goal in college was to get a computer programming degree and join up with a large game development studio, but as she progressed, she realized she could still make video games without having to be attached to a studio. [5] Following her graduation, Thorson moved into a Vancouver apartment with Johnston where they shared game ideas. Most of these were browser games, and they successfully had a few of theirs published by Adult Swim Games on its site. [6]
Thorson and Johnston were visited by friends they had made online. [5] During a visit by Alec Holowka, he and Thorson participated in a local game jam and came up with an idea of a single-player platform game based on an out-of-shape archer trying to ascend a tower, collecting treasure and money to help with each attempt to climb it. [5] They had considered pitching the idea to Adult Swim Games, but decided to expand the idea on their own, bringing in Johnston to help. The game morphed into a multiplayer battle game, where each player would try to defeat the others by shooting them with a bow-and-arrow while avoiding falling off the tower. Because of the frequent visitors to their apartment, they were able to gain feedback and improve the game to be a party-style title. [5] This would ultimately become TowerFall , Thorson's first major commercial game. [5]
Recognizing the potential success of the title, Johnston suggested that they get a house in Vancouver to bring in others to help, which they acquired around October 2012, calling it the "Indie House" and inviting other collaborators to join them. Thorson incorporated as Matt Makes Games Inc. shortly afterwards in November 2012. [8] Later, Holowka recognized Thorson as TowerFall's main creator and relinquished his stake as a co-creator. Holowka remained on the game's development team as its composer. TowerFall was ultimately developed as an exclusive for the Ouya console. [9] Following its initial release in 2013, the team reissued the game in 2014 as TowerFall: Ascension for most other gaming platforms with additional features. [5] TowerFall: Ascension was critically praised, and within a month had brought in over US$500,000. [5]
In August 2015, Thorson and Noel Berry, another member of Matt Makes Games, had a four-day game jam to create a PICO-8 game about climbing a mountain with difficult jumping steps. When they completed this, they recognized the opportunity to flesh out the game into a full release, forming the basis of Celeste . Full work on the game started around January 2016. [10] The game was released across multiple platforms in January 2018. By the end of 2018, it had sold more than 500,000 copies, [11] and received numerous industry awards.
In 2021, after the establishment of Extremely OK Games, Matt Makes Games was renamed to Maddy Makes Games. [a]
Thorson has developed romhacks for various Mario games. She has released three hacks for Super Mario World including Super Mario World Remix in 2015, Super "Sonic Saves the World" World in 2021, and Sure Shot in 2022. [14] [15] She has also designed levels for Kaizo Mario World collaboration hacks.
Her hacks have been featured in various speedrunning events including Romhack Races and Summer Games Done Quick 2023 & 2024. [16] [17] She also released a level for the Super Mario 64 hack Mario Builder 64 titled Ocean Spire on May 24, 2024. [18]
On 5 September 2019, Thorson announced that she was effectively shutting down Matt Makes Games, while re-establishing the same team under the new name Extremely OK Games (abbreviated EXOK). The purpose of the change was twofold. First, the new name recognized that Thorson was not the sole creative force behind the games and ensured that the whole team was fully recognized and shared in the collective output from the company. Second, the change coincided with a move to a new set of offices in Vancouver to house the entire team, which had been previously spread across the world, including some in São Paulo. [19] EXOK was technically founded in March 2019, but the first six months had been spent working to move these international developers into Canada and dealing with immigration requirements. [20] The "Extremely OK" name itself came from a humorous tweet that operations manager Heidy Motta had seen that wished its readers an "extremely OK afternoon". [20]
Thorson stated that TowerFall and Celeste would remain published under Matt Makes Games, and that the team had already started the early exploratory work for their next title, codenamed "EXOK-1". [19] With everyone in EXOK working in the same office, it had made development time faster, allowing them to test through multiple prototype games to come onto their next project within six months. [20] The team went through three prototypes (named EXOK 1 through 3) which Thorson said "ventured way too far from our comfort zone for them to realistically ever get finished", before coming up with a fourth prototype that evolved into their first game under the "Extremely OK" name, Earthblade , announced in April 2021, described as an "explor-action" game in a "seamless pixel art world". [21] [22] [23] The game was formally announced at The Game Awards 2022 with a planned 2024 release date, [24] but was pushed back an unspecified time in March 2024. [25] In January 2025, Thorson, on the company's blog, announced that the game had been canceled, citing the dispute over intellectual property rights of Celeste and struggles with development as some of the reasons. [26]
| Year | Title |
|---|---|
| 2004 | Jumper |
| 2004 | Jumper Two |
| 2008 | Jumper Three |
| 2013 | TowerFall |
| 2015 | Celeste Classic |
| 2018 | Celeste |
| 2021 | Celeste Classic 2: Lani's Trek |
| 2022 | Sure Shot |
| 2024 | Celeste 64: Fragments of the Mountain |
| Title | Platform(s) |
|---|---|
| Earthblade | Windows |
Thorson is transgender [27] and uses she/her pronouns. [1] [28] By around 2020, she had adopted the name Maddy Thorson. [29] In the Farewell DLC to the game Celeste, the final cutscene shows the character Madeline in her room with a rainbow flag and transgender flag. Thorson later confirmed that Madeline was trans in a blog post which also reflected on her own coming to terms with her gender identity. [27] [30]
Thorson was named by Forbes as one of their "30 Under 30" for gaming in 2014, recognizing her for the development of TowerFall. [31] [32]
Princess Peach is a character in Nintendo's Mario franchise. She was created by Shigeru Miyamoto and introduced in the 1985 original Super Mario Bros. game as Princess Toadstool. She is the princess regnant and head of state of the Mushroom Kingdom, where she resides in her castle along with Toads. Since her debut, she has appeared in the majority of Mario video games as the main female character and the romantic interest of Mario. She has been voiced by Samantha Kelly since 2007.
Aquaria is a side-scrolling action-adventure game designed by Alec Holowka and Derek Yu, who published the game in 2007 as an independent game company Bit Blot. The game follows Naija, an aquatic humanoid woman, as she explores the underwater world of Aquaria. Along her journey, she learns about the history of the world she inhabits as well as her own past. The gameplay focuses on a combination of swimming, singing, and combat, through which Naija can interact with the world. Her songs can move items, affect plants and animals, and change her physical appearance into other forms that have different abilities, like firing projectiles at hostile creatures, or passing through barriers inaccessible to her in her natural form.
Derek Yu is an American independent video game designer, video game artist, and blogger. Yu has designed and co-designed several award-winning games, most famously Spelunky, Aquaria, and Eternal Daughter. He is also notable as a blogger and custodian of the influential TIGSource blog/community about independent video games. He has been called an "indie superstar" and a "genuine icon" of the video game industry.
Madeleine, or Madeline has biblical origins. The name Magdalena is derived from the Aramaic term "Magdala" (מגדלא), meaning "tower" or "elevated, great." It refers to the town of Magdala on the Sea of Galilee, traditionally identified as the hometown of Mary Magdalene, a prominent figure in the New Testament who was a follower of Jesus. Therefore, Magdalena can be interpreted as "woman from Magdala."
Markus Alexej Persson, also known as Notch, is a Swedish video game programmer and designer. He is the creator of Minecraft, which is the best-selling video game in history. He founded the video game development company Mojang Studios in 2009.
The music of the 2011 video game Minecraft, developed by Mojang Studios, primarily consists of two soundtrack albums by German musician Daniel Rosenfeld, better known as C418. American composer Lena Raine has also contributed music for four major updates to the game since 2020, alongside Aaron Cherof and Kumi Tanioka who worked on the most recent version in 2024. Music included in downloadable content (DLC) for legacy console versions of the game was handled by British musician Gareth Coker.
TowerFall is an action indie video game created by Maddy Thorson through her company Maddy Makes Games. In the game, players control up to four archers in a multiplayer platform fighter. It was released on the Ouya microconsole in June 2013 and was later ported to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Linux, OS X, and Windows as TowerFall Ascension and to the Nintendo Switch under its original title of TowerFall.
Madeline Lee Green is a New Zealand cricketer who currently plays for Auckland and New Zealand.
Sickhead Games, LLC is an American independent game development studio founded in 2002. It is best known for its multiplatform turn-based strategy game ARMED!, its involvement with the MonoGame framework and Torque series of game engines, and the development of several PlayStation 4/5, PlayStation Vita, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch ports of indie games including TowerFall Ascension, Stardew Valley, Darkest Dungeon, Octodad: Dadliest Catch, Slay the Spire, and Axiom Verge. The studio has updated classic console and PC games from the late 1990s and early 2000s, including ExZeus, Enclave, and Grandia, to run on modern gaming systems.
Portrayals of transgender people in mass media reflect societal attitudes about transgender identity, and have varied and evolved with public perception and understanding. Media representation, culture industry, and social marginalization all hint at popular culture standards and the applicability and significance to mass culture, even though media depictions represent only a minuscule spectrum of the transgender group, which essentially conveys that those that are shown are the only interpretations and ideas society has of them. However, in 2014, the United States reached a "transgender tipping point", according to Time. At this time, the media visibility of transgender people reached a level higher than seen before. Since then, the number of transgender portrayals across TV platforms has stayed elevated. Research has found that viewing multiple transgender TV characters and stories improves viewers' attitudes toward transgender people and related policies.
Night in the Woods is a 2017 single-player adventure video game developed by Infinite Fall and published by Finji. Set in a world of zoomorphic humans, the story follows a young feline person named Mae, who drops out of college and returns to her hometown to find unexpected changes, alongside Bea, a gothic crocodile woman and her childhood best friend. The game was funded via Kickstarter, where it earned over four times its initial US$50,000 funding goal.
Celeste is a 2018 platform game developed and published by indie studio Maddy Makes Games. The player controls Madeline, a young woman with anxiety and depression who endeavors to climb Celeste Mountain. During her climb, she encounters several characters, including Part of You, a personification of her self-doubt who attempts to stop her from climbing the mountain.
Amora Bettany is a Brazilian video game artist based in Vancouver. Her work can be seen in Out There Somewhere (2012), TowerFall (2013), and Celeste (2018). She prefers to work on concept and high resolution art, which is later pixelated by her partner Pedro Medeiros or used in game as it is.
Madeline is a fictional character who serves as the main protagonist of the video game Celeste by Maddy Thorson. Throughout the game, she climbs the titular Mount Celeste, simultaneously dealing with anxiety and other issues. The character is notable as one of the few transgender protagonist characters in the video game industry: her identity as a trans woman was confirmed by Thorson in 2020, after the release of Farewell, a downloadable content expansion pack for Celeste, which received significant media coverage.
Lena Raine, also known as Lena Chappelle or Kuraine, is an American and Canadian composer, producer, and video game developer. Raine is best known for her work on the soundtracks of Minecraft, Celeste, and Guild Wars 2. She has composed music for various other video games, including Deltarune and Chicory: A Colorful Tale.
Pauline is a character from the Mario and Donkey Kong video game franchises by Nintendo. She was created by Japanese video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto and debuted as Lady, the damsel in distress of the 1981 arcade game Donkey Kong. In the game, she is kidnapped by the titular Donkey Kong and must be rescued by her love interest, Mario.
Earthblade was a Metroidvania platform video game in development by Extremely OK Games. It was intended to be an exploration-action and platformer video game, featuring an art style similar to the studio's previous game, Celeste. Its development began in 2019 and was first publicly announced in 2021. The game's footage was showcased at The Game Awards 2022, which was positively received by reviewers.
Celeste 64: Fragments of the Mountain is a 2024 3D platformer video game developed and published by Canadian indie studio Extremely OK Games for Linux, macOS and Microsoft Windows. The game was developed during a week long game jam, in which it released in celebration of the sixth anniversary of the 2018 video game Celeste. The game released January 29, 2024, acting as semi-sequel to that game and a continuation to its narrative.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)Maddy currently works at EXOK, a game studio that she and her friends created.
Media related to Maddy Thorson at Wikimedia Commons