Tommy Refenes | |
|---|---|
 Refenes at the 2012 Game Developers Conference | |
| Born | June 14, 1981 |
| Occupation(s) | Video game designer, programmer CEO of Team Meat |
| Known for | Super Meat Boy |
Tommy Refenes is an American video game designer and programmer, best known for his work on the game Super Meat Boy , a platformer he co-created with designer Edmund McMillen.
Refenes began programming at the age of eleven, and has been doing so professionally since the age of 18, [1] initially contracting for a website whose owner had threatened to sue him over a parody Flash game he had made. [2] He dropped out of North Carolina State University; he later told gaming blog Brutal Gamer "if you want to be a programmer, do not go to college." [3] He is also Type 1 Diabetic, as revealed in Indie Game The Movie.
Refenes started at Seventy - Two DPI in August 2001 where he managed their website and servers. In August 2003 he was hired by Learning Station, where he developed server software and applications in Flash, C++, PHP, and ASP. In July 2005 he decided to shift to the computer game field and went to work for Streamline Studios, where he assisted in optimizing and porting the Unreal 2.x engine from the original Xbox to the Xbox 360, [4] In May 2006, Refenes and Aubrey Hesselgren, a game designer, founded the company Pillowfort. Their first effort was a game they dubbed Goo!. In 2008 Goo! won the grand prize for Best Threaded Game in the 2008 Intel Game Demo Contest, and took third place for Best Game on Intel Graphics. [5] The game was canceled and Refenes left the studio in January 2009.
In 2009 he co-founded the company Team Meat with game and graphics designer Edmund McMillen, with Refenes acting as programmer and co-CEO. [6] Super Meat Boy is the only game they have published together as McMillen left Team Meat in 2017, and they are not expected to work on more projects together. Though Team Meat did release Super Meat Boy Forever in 2020 with Refenes as a designer and leader programmer, [7] McMillen was not involved and later stated that he would not return to the series. [8]
In March 2010 at the Game Developers Conference 2010, Refenes criticized Apple's App Store, calling it "awful" and "horrible" and likened its games to the crude Tiger Electronics games that were popular in the 1980s and 1990s. [9] Seven days after this speech was given, Apple pulled the game Zits & Giggles from the market. [9] Refenes had developed the game and sold it through the App Store in order to satirize what he considered to be the nonsensical nature of the App Store. In response to its removal he and McMillen launched the Super Meat Boy Handheld on the App Store. The game adopted the art style and gameplay of the Tiger handheld series of games. As Refenes described it, "Super Meat Boy Handheld is all the branding of Super Meat Boy, without the actual gameplay or art from Super Meat Boy...and all for ONLY A DOLLAR." [10]
| Title | Platform(s) | Release year | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| nail jesus to the cross!! | Flash | 2000 [11] | |
| Bitch Hunt | Flash | 2000 [11] | |
| Owl Country [12] | Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows | 2008 | Voice Work, voices the owl |
| Grey Matter | Flash | 2008 [11] | |
| Beat! Music Memory Match | iOS | 2009 [13] | |
| Free Money* Scratch n'Win [11] | iOS | 2009 | |
| Zits & Giggles | iOS | 2009 [9] | |
| Goo [1] | N/A | 2009 | Cancelled |
| Super Meat Boy HANDHELD! [14] | iOS | 2010 | Considered a Lost Media |
| Super Meat Boy | Linux, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Xbox Live Arcade | 2010 | |
| Super Meat Boy Forever [15] | Epic Games Store, Steam, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, PlayStation 4 | 2020 | |
| Dr. Fetus' Mean Meat Machine [16] | Steam, Epic Games Store, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4 [17] | 2023 |
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Alien Hominid is a run and gun video game developed by The Behemoth and first released as a Flash game on the multimedia website Newgrounds on August 7, 2002. It was originally developed in Adobe Flash by programmer and Newgrounds founder, Tom Fulp, and animator and artist, Dan Paladin. It has since been re-released in several expanded and enhanced iterations for home consoles and computers.
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Edmund Charles McMillen is an American video game designer and artist. He is known for his Adobe Flash games with unconventional visual styles. His works include 2010's side-scroller Super Meat Boy, 2011's roguelike game The Binding of Isaac, and its 2014 remake The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth.
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Indie Game: The Movie is a 2012 documentary film made by Canadian filmmakers James Swirsky and Lisanne Pajot. The film is about the struggles of independent game developers Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes during the development of Super Meat Boy, Phil Fish during the development of Fez, and also Jonathan Blow, who reflects on the success of Braid.
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The End Is Nigh is a platform action-adventure video game developed by Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel. It was released on July 12, 2017 on Microsoft Windows via Steam. Ports of the game were released on August 15, 2017, on macOS, December 12, 2017, for Linux and Nintendo Switch and on April 30, 2019, for PlayStation 4. The game has been described as a spiritual successor to McMillen's Super Meat Boy.
Tyler Glaiel, also known by the moniker Glaiel Games, is an American video game designer and programmer known for games such as Aether (2008), Closure (2012), Number (2013), Bombernauts (2017), The End Is Nigh (2017) and Mewgenics (2025).
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