About Software Basement Tapes

Software Basement Tapes is a new indie game company founded to write great Windows® Phone 7 games. The power of Windows® Phone 7 combined with easy development tools makes WP7 too hard to resist. The road from great game concept to great game has never been so short!

Martin L. Shoemaker, Game Designer and Developer

A Windows® developer since 1990, Martin has been a game player even longer, and has been designing games for almost as long. He's a fan of "little games", simple rules that combine in intricate ways to produce a lot of game play variety.

At Software Basement Tapes, Martin is the chief designer and developer for our games. He's also the webmaster and the guy responsible for any mistakes around here, so don't blame the rest of the team! He teaches software analysis and design through The UML Guy.

Curtis Gray, Design Consultant

Curtis has developed software for over two decades, including work in video training systems, video library management, and yes, games.

At Software Basement Tapes, Curtis is the design sounding board and solutions guy, keeping the game concepts small and simple and fun. He also develops tubeCore, The App that brings online media to your XBox360, Desktop or Laptop Windows Media Center.

Bill Emerson and Kevin Brown, Game Consultants

Bill Emerson works in tech support for media software.

Kevin Brown works in project management and design for software companies. He blogs at alphabetagamma.com.

And in their spare time, they've played a lot of games.

At Software Basement Tapes, Bill and Kevin keep the focus on the essentials that make a game playable, replayable, and fun. They help us to separate fun from fluff, and turn the fun up to 11.

Cory Buckowing, Playtester

In between classes, homework, and his social life, Cory likes to squeeze in as much gaming as he can; but with so little time to spare, he puts a premium on games he can pick up and play right away yet keep finding new features down the road. That makes him a great playtester for Software Basement Tapes.

Geoff Nostrant, Musician

Geoff's a world-traveling language teacher, a South Korean TV star, a great fencer, and a gamer; but first and foremost, he's a musician specializing in ambient music (but other styles as well). He records under the name Silvercord, and also does custom music mixing and mastering through Black Swan Audio.

Geoff contributed movement 1-Withinmyheartsslumberingsoul from his Symphony of Sighs album as the background music for Orbital Rendezvous. We hope to feature more of his music in future games.

Why "Software Basement Tapes"?

Every artisan needs a workshop, a place where he or she turns out fine hand-crafted works that are high quality and intricate, but usually smaller in scope than factory production. And though that workshop may be in the garage or the back shed, often it's in the basement.

And in music, there's a long tradition of "basement tapes": independent recordings where the musicians focus less on big production numbers and more on the heart of the music.

And some of our favorite game rooms for both board games and video games have been in basement dens with shelves stocked full of games.

So when we needed a name for a small independent game company writing great Windows® Phone 7 games, Software Basement Tapes was an inspired choice.

(Besides, we were in our basement game room at the time...)