Alec Holowka

Alec Holowka
Occupation	Game programmer, designer, musician

Alec Holowka is a Canadian indie game developer, co-founder of an independent game companies Bit Blot, and Infinite Ammo, where he works as lead programmer, musician and game designer. He collaborated with Derek Yu to create the award-winning game Aquaria and freeware game I'm O.K - A Murder Simulator.

Alec Holowka was introduced to programming at the age of eight when his father purchased him a book Basic Fun. Eventually he began working with a freeware group called Zaphire Productions. Since then he worked for a number of failed startups, including one in Winnipeg, Canada working on a PC multiplayer fantasy action title and a combat racer in Vancouver, Canada for the Xbox 360.

Holowka acted as sound engineer on the 2006 freeware title I'm O.K - A Murder Simulator as a response to American lawyer Jack Thompson's A Modest Video Game Proposal. Holowka met Derek Yu in the comments section of popular technology website Slashdot in a post regarding Jack Thompson's proposal and along with Chris Hanson and Phil Jones formed satire company Thompsonsoft for the once-off release.

After its release Holowka introduced Yu to a project he had been working on independently, Yu was interested in the project and the two officially formed developer Bit Blot the week before the Independent Games Festival deadline. The project was released on 7 December 2007 under the title Aquaria and was the recipient of the Independent Games Festival Seumas McNally grand prize for best game in March 2007.

In October 2013, Holowka and independent animator Scott Benson successfully crowdfunded the game Night in the Woods under the studio name "Infinite Fall".

I'm O.K. is a side-scrolling satirical platform shoot-em-up, which was created by Derek Yu (art), Alec Holowka (sound), and Chris Hanson (code) as a response to Jack Thompson's open letter, "A Modest Video Game Proposal." It is a "retro" style arcade game, which parodies various famous games, game companies, and game developers. The main protagonist of the game is Osaki Kim, who blames the video game industry for the death of his child. The player takes the role of the Osaki Kim as he shoots his way up to the E3 Media and Business Summit, killing game developers along the way.

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