A good game is a springboard for the player's own creativity, and a space for emotional connection. Achieving this relies on the designer creating a sense of trust with the player.

Alistair's driving belief is that a game should not just be a product for a player to consume. It is what the player brings to the game themselves that makes it unique, meaningful and memorable.

Enabling creativity can empower a player to make the game their own. They can use games to express the feelings they keep hidden, or the personality traits they hold back. Games create a safe space for trying out ideas.

As a designer he sees players as his stage partners: equal creative voices creating the play experiences with him. He draws a lot of inspiration from the world of clowns, who make direct connections with the audience and develop material in-the-moment through freeform play.

Alistair often talk about his process on his blog and his podcast. Whether it's games, shows or art pieces, every project is a chance to test an idea. An idea about who we are, about how we experience the world, and what we can find in the unexpected.

Alistair began developing games over 20 years ago. He started working full-time as a game developer after graduating university in 2010.

He studied Mathematics at the University of Warwick, graduating with an Undergraduate Master's degree with First Class Honours.

From 2008 to 2009 he spent one year as an ERASMUS exchange student at the elite École Normale Supérieure in Lyon, France. There he was taught and studied entirely in French, and developed high-level French language skills.

In 2011 he released his first mobile games into the Apple App Store. He developed these games, from design to final release, as a one-man studio. Bringing these games to market, he took on the challenges of building an independent games business, including press and marketing, and proving out his plans with minimum viable product versions of his games.

His efforts were rewarded with front-page App Store placement for Slamjet Stadium - his fourth iOS game - in 61 countries. He also developed a process of using live in-person testing, acid-testing a game's unique selling point, and letting their instinctive reactions inspire better designs.

In 2014 he began building alternative-controller games aimed at museums and public events, drawing on his games' propensity to get players socialising, and to create memorable moments players would talk about afterwards. His games often get players moving, and encourage them to be silly, chaotic and creative.

He also uses these same methods to get players emotionally engaged. In 2018 his award-nominated The Book Ritual used a modified paper shredder as a way to help players connect with the emotions around grief and loss.

In 2016 he created his first stage show, The Incredible Playable Show. This set off a chain of stage performance creations, drawing on classic console emulation, dancing, painting and clown theatre. He also develops interactive livestreams, transferring the chaotic joy of his stage work into playful broadcasts where the viewers control the action.

His stage performances are energetic, fearless and inclusive. He always makes an effort to get every audience member actively involved in the show. His philosophy is that every player should go home knowing the show would have been different if they weren't there.

From 2013 to 2025 he was contracted as a games expert by Sparx Maths, designing and developing educational games for their platform, and creating innovative learning tools for their Discovery R&D team.

There, he designed games to test hypotheses of digital learning proposed by the company's pedagogy specialists. I developed several of these into finished games as part of the Sparx learning system, that are used in Maths teaching by over 2200 UK schools.