Cygnus Entertainment Team

Marcus Maximus Mera

Amber Johnson

James Carroll

Emily Compton

Jon West

Tobias Bryn

Mitchell Creeden

Kyle Johnston

Ethan Vuong

Dan Thompson

Chris Dean

Steve Alexander

Vaikunth Raghavan

Allen Oliver

Morgan Hamilton

Giovanna Marrero

Thomas Hopfer

Jason Cryer

Dan Policar

Darren Seaverns

Dom Walker

Michael Arens

Justin Johnson

PJ DiCesare

Roberta Vaughan

Jayson Bennett

Cory Baxter

Marcus Mera

Marcus Maximus is an artist for Colossal Cave, a single-player video game from legendary gaming developers Ken and Roberta Williams, founders of Sierra On-Line.

A New York City-based designer, Mera’s work includes High jewelry for Harry Winston, Van Cleef and Arpels, and Loreal USA. He is also the founder of Guillotine (TM) – http://guillotine.tv – a lifestyle clothing brand featuring bold and authentic designs that have attracted fans around the world, especially combat sports enthusiasts. His athletic gear has been worn by Mixed Martial Arts superstars Renzo Gracie, Eddie Alvarez, and Gordon Ryan.

Mera collaborated on a Horror jewelry collection for noted tattoo artist Paul Booth, using 3D design techniques that were seldom seen in the industry before. He has also worked with artist Jeffry Dali and studied under Master Jeweler George Kocsis.

As a Martial Artist himself, Mera produced Cage Fashion, a Las Vegas fashion show at the Mandalay Bay Resort featuring UFC stars Randy Couture, Urijah Faber, Eddie Alvarez, Arianny Celeste, and more, highlighting combat sports brands like UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) Silver Star, TapouT, and Guillotine. It was featured on Fox Fight Game and sponsored by EA Sports.

Marcus also served as a weekly panelist on the MMA news show “Fox Fight Game” and was a frequent guest on Sirius XM’s “TapouT Radio. Mera trains Jiu-Jitsu and Muay Thai at Renzo Gracie Academy in New York City and holds a purple belt under Master Renzo Gracie.

Mera also taught a 3D Arts workshop in collaboration with Isles, Inc for inner-city youth in Trenton, NJ, where he also taught art at the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen and the A-Team at Studio 51.

When not training or working on graphic designs he spends time on the beach or camping with his daughter Maya.

Specialties: Hand Made Jewelry, 3D Manufacturing, 3D Jewelry Design, 3D Product Development, Prototyping, Solidscape 3Z Printer, Rhino, T-splines, and Zbrush Designer, Jewelry Design and Production, Apparel Design, Diamonds, Diamond purchasing, Gold investments, Gold Purchasing, Platinum, Apparel Manufacturing, Brand Development, 3D Technology, MMA, Jiu-Jitsu, TV Production, Film

Amber Johnson

Amber Johnson’s focus is primarily on environment art and level design. She’s been working in the field since 2007, picking up other skills along the way. She is also a professor at a community college in Raleigh, North Carolina. Part of the fun of working and teaching is being able to bring the current industry trends back to her students. One of her current areas of interest is using photogrammetry to create game assets. When not working with game technology, she enjoys spending time outside away from technology.

James Carroll

James Carroll is a Lead Technical Artist on the team with a rigging and animation background. He learned to program by challenging himself to write genetic algorithms and artificial neural networks in Java. James holds two AAS degrees from Wake Technical Community College in Simulation and Game Development: one in Art & Modeling, and the other in Programming. Since graduating, he has worked on a variety of projects on contract for clients such as Verizon, Hyper.Online, and Aspiring Unicorn Games. He now works on environment assets, cinematics, and VFX for Colossal Cave.

Emily Compton

Emily Compton is a generalist artist and animator living in Queens, who found the perfect outlet for her creative passions in game development. After graduating from NYU with a degree in Film & Animation, she made her career at a number of New York-based indie studios, helping to create visuals for projects such as such as “Guns of Icarus Online,” “Hiveswap,” and “Miasma Caves.” She enjoys collaborating on various ideas with her partner Rym, and in addition to artist, she dabbles in such roles as novelist, translator, cyclist, hiker, and guardian to a darling rabbit.

Jon West

Jon West is a game developer that co-founded Easy Day Studios and created Skater XL which evolved modern skateboard games, selling nearly a million copies.  Sometime after leaving the studio Jon worked with MdDS Reset to build a VR app, MDDS Reset Vortex, an app designed to help alleviate Mal de Debarquement syndrome.  The app is now in clinical trials.  Between prototyping his next game and enjoying life, Jon stumbled across a reddit post from the legendary Ken Williams looking for an engineer.  Now he spends his days helping the Williams bring their vision to light.

Tobias Bryn

Tobias Phelps is a jack-of-all-trades game developer and programmer. Currently based out of Moscow, ID, he had been working as a freelance developer before signing on with Cygnus.

Mitchell Creeden

Mitchell Creeden is a mixed media artist creating work from galleries to online content through drawing, animation, music, performance art and writing. With an interest in any form of creativity they can get their hands on, their ultimate pursuit is to combine them all as a director in media, game design and film. They started working as a professional game design artist in 2016 and are continuing to make that pursuit a reality.

Kyle Johnston

Kyle Johnston is a Gameplay Engineer and Software Developer. He was born on the Fort Hood Army base in Texas and raised in Brigham City, Utah and is currently living in Thailand after moving there with his wife. Kyle graduated from Neumont College of Computer Science in 2021 and started working for Cygnus as his first job in the field.

Ethan Vuong

Hey, I’m Ethan! I’m a 3D artist with a huge passion for creating captivating worlds, level design, and all things games! I started out as a community mapper for Team Fortress 2 since 2016, and also work on a speedrunning passion project called Momentum Mod! Life somehow led me to working on this super exciting game, I hope you enjoy our adventure!

Dan Thompson

Senior Engineer/ Junior Unity Engineer

Dan has 26 years of Programming in the business world and jumped at the chance to join Cygnus Entertainment to full fill a lifelong dream to do game programming and is having fun learning and contributing on CC3DA!

Chris Dean

Fresh out of NCSU’s Art & Design program, Christopher Dean is a talented artist, researcher, and comedian (according to him). His time at university was longer than most, as he bounced around trying to find what suited him most in life. He started art, tried engineering, tried history, then circled back to art in the end, and all thanks to one class he fondly remembers to this day! Carrying a strong love for video games, it was only natural that he honed his skills to be a 3D artist. This project is a matter of fact his first real professional experience related to game art, and he looks forward to other fun opportunities down the line.

Steve Alexander

Steven Alexander is an award-winning game designer and writer from Syracuse, NY. After producing remakes of King’s Quest III and Space Quest II, he started his own company, Infamous Quests, and created Quest for Infamy and Order of the Thorne. He joins the team at Cygnus after being a lifelong admirer of Ken & Roberta Williams’ work. He has excitedly worked on QA for Colossal Cave and looks forward to working on more games in the future. He is a kidney transplant recipient and a kidney dialysis advocate. He has two children, and a Boston Terrier who he spends most of his time with.

Vaikunth Raghavan

Vaikunth is a 3D Environment Artist and a storyteller. Born and raised in South India, Vaikunth moved to the states to pursue a career in games and animation. Since 2020, Vaikunth has worked on indie games, animated shorts, VR experiences, and designed game-based learning experiences for schools in North Carolina. In 2022, Vaikunth joined Cygnus Entertainment to work on their take on Colossal Cave.

Allen Oliver

Allen Oliver was born in the mountains of Northeast Tennessee. Allen began making games in his teenage years and has worked on a variety of projects, large and small, for multiple platforms throughout his career. He has a strong passion for Technology, History, Philosophy, and Video Games. Allen joined Cygnus Entertainment to provide high-quality console ports of Colossal Cave.

Morgan Hamilton

Morgan Hamilton is a Hardsurface Environment Artist. They were born in San Diego, California, grew up in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and is now living in Rochester, New York with their two partners. They graduated from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 2022, did a few years of freelancing, and is now working at Cygnus Entertainment as their first big role in the games industry. In their free-time, Morgan plays D&D, walking-simulator or basebuilder video games, and works to perfect their cooking. More of their artwork can be found at: https://www.artstation.com/hamiltonimaginations

Giovanna Marrero

Coming soon.

Thomas Hopfer

Thomas Hopfer is a 3D artist and educator currently based out of Raleigh, NC. After moving to the area in the late 1990’s from Fairfax, VA, he became obsessed with learning the ins and outs of the gaming industry gaining experience from major studios like Epic Games. At Epic Games, he gained the opportunity to work on projects like Fortnite, Paragon, and Unreal Tournament as a User Experience Researcher and Quality Assurance Tester. He has been teaching 3D Art at various NC-based schools for the last four years and is happy to be working with the Cygnus team to create a brand new project. He is happy to have the support of his lovely partner, Allison, and daughter, Ada.

Jason Cryer

Jason Cryer is a voice actor, among other talents such as art, music, and animation.  Originally from Monroe, Louisiana, Jason now resides in Fargo, North Dakota and although still a relative newcomer to the VA scene, his background in performing goes as far back as high school plays.  He has previously appeared in web series and podcasts such as “Maine Events” and “The Stench of Adventure”, as well as numerous Adventure Jam games since 2019, and you can soon hear him as the narrator of the upcoming video game “Colossal Cave Adventure 3D” by Cygnus Entertainment.

Dan Policar

Dan Policar, is a Grammy-nominated international touring musician, songwriter, and producer. He was born and raised in Seattle, Washington and is currently based in the NYC area. Dan has performed in more than 60 countries as a member of multi-platinum Grammy-winning superstar Sean Paul’s band, “The BaddaBanz”. Recently, Dan completed composition on the soundtrack to “Empire of Sin” by Romero Games and is the composer on the upcoming EGA text parser mystery adventure, “The Crimson Diamond” by Julia Minamata.

Darren Seaverns

Darren is a programmer and an indie game developer. He was born in Florida and lives in Pennsylvania with his wife and two cats. Video games are his lifelong passion. As a child his father was in school for game design and began teaching him to 3D model by the fourth grade. By graduation Darren had created websites, flash games, various mods for his favorite games, programs such as text games, and learned to code fluently in several languages. A few years later he was introduced to Unity and would make small games in his free time for several years while working freelance and his regular day jobs in sales in which he sold life insurance and waited tables. At the end of 2021 he had created a game called “Invictus” which was a free game on Itch.io and was a huge boost of confidence for his career. His role at Cygnus Entertainment as a programmer is his first big job in the industry and he is thankful to work with such an amazing team.

Dom Walker

Dominic Walker is a game designer with a deep passion for games. Growing up, when times were hard, he found he could turn to games to enjoy himself. He was able to make new friends through these experiences as well as stay in touch with old ones. He wants to share those opportunities with others by creating fun experiences for the next generation of gamers.

Michael Arens

Michael Arens is a graphic designer, concept artist, animator and voice actor. He lives in Cary, North Carolina with his adorable cat and dog. When not working on bringing ideas to life in Photoshop, he can be found at the dog park or teaching vocal lessons online.

Justin Johnson

Justin is a generalist, experienced in all aspects of game development including art, design, and programming. He has worked at AAA and indie companies in a variety of roles. He is currently a professor in media arts and technology while working on a Doctor of Design degree. His interests include developing VR games, horror games, and retro media. When not in front of a computer, Justin enjoys spending time outdoors, cooking, and cultivating mushrooms.

PJ DiCesare

Coming soon.

Roberta Vaughan

Roberta Vaughan has worked in the adventure game community managing marketing and public relations for over 5 years. Her original background is in film public relations and arts non-profit business management. She has a deep passion for adventure games, and ended up working in community management having co-founded the Facebook group, The Classic Gamers Guild. She currently represents Robert Holmes, and helps support many adventure game devs, artists, and musicians. She currently resides in Forks, Washington helping to take care of her parents, and loves her dog, Ivan.

Jayson Bennett

Jayson Bennett is a generalist and environment artist living in New England. A lifelong game-enthusiast and sketch-artist (who really, really loves Final Fantasy), he started designing and developing in high school as a hobby before completing a degree in Video Game Design at New England Institute of Technology. A former lecturer at UMass Dartmouth, he found his footing freelancing for online, team-building puzzle games. He joined Cygnus Entertainment, developing terrain, world effects, and providing promotional material.

Cory Baxter

Pharmaceutical chemist turned game developer, Cory Baxter joined the Colossal Cave team in January 2022. Since then he has worked tirelessly designing and programming characters, encounter, puzzles and content for the game while also collaborating with artists and the other engineers to create the best Colossal Cave experience possible!

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James Mulval

I was born in the UK and have written for various games including quest for infamy, crimson city crisis, steam marines 2 and over 300 tracks for American Pickers. I live with my wife and family in Kingston Canada

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