Transhuman Design (THD) is an independent development group led by Michał Marcinkowski ‘MM’ - developer of Soldat, the indie classic that dominated the 2D multiplayer world and directly inspired games like N, Showdown Effect and Take Arms. Since then, MM has surrounded himself with a handful of like-minded people in order to do one thing: dominate the world with the most entertaining multiplayer g
ame of all time! Michał Marcinkowski ‘MM’ inspired by a finnish game called Liero begins work on a revolutionary 2D action game called Soldat. Computer games were Michal’s passion since the age of 4. Amongst his childhood hero’s were Jordan Mechner and Eric Chahi. Like his hero's before him he decides to make this game by himself. Soldat is released the next year. To this day the game has been downloaded nearly 2,000,000 times. What caught gamers attention was a never before seen blend of side-scrolling action, player versus player combat and realistic weapons. Positively reviewed by nearly all computer gaming magazines, featured on G4TV and received numerous awards including Top 10 in GameSpy’s independent game selection. For many years part of the Electronic Games League. Inspired many successors including N, Crash Commando, Showdown Effect and Take Arms. The game was praised for its simplicity and addictive qualities. Around 2008 MM started to depart from Soldat and left it in the hands of the large community that was created during those years. MM then started work on what turned out to be a 3 year project called Link-Dead. It gathered attention after a series of videos showing off the games 2D light and shadow effects. Link-Dead introduced real-time lights, HDR effects, ambient lighting and an automaton for simulating fog and dust effects. The game however after initial alpha release went nowhere. Mainly because it wasn't fun enough, a problem which was 'fixed' in THD's next game. In April 2011 MM secretly started developing a new game based on the Link-Dead engine. He did not announce this to anybody and made the game anonymously. He decided on retro pixel graphics looks and classic console gaming mechanics – pack it in a medieval scenery with knights and archers and add multiplayer. It was Soldat with swords and castles. Still undercover MM assigned a pixel artist to the project called Max Cahill “Geti”. Geti was a graphics guy and game developer popular on the Data Realms forums (Cortex Command game forums). After exactly 17 days the game was released on a game developer's website and then on DataRealms forums. The games popularity started there. King Arthur’s Gold was born, MM joined forces with Geti, and a new game development philosophy was formed - based on freedom from scripted sequences and cooperative multiplayer design. Transhuman Design has now all the ingredients to make the best multiplayer game ever made.
