Immortui: the debut game from a 15-year-old designer

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I had a hard time arranging a Skype interview with Samuel Silvester, the designer of Immortui, because I kept suggesting dates and times when he was at school. Silvester was 15 years old when he released his game in 2013, and his GCSEs were well under way. It's crazy: on top of history, business studies, music, further maths and all the rest, he still found the energy to code a bizarre first game. A bizarre first paid game, anyway. He's been tinkering with game design itself for years.
"I started just playing games on my dad's Mac when I was really young," says Silvester when I ask about his earliest gaming memories. "Really, really old games. Nanosaur I think was one of them." (Nanosaur, and this kills me, Silvester, was released in 1998.) "I always liked computers and I was always on them for a long time. Then I found GameMaker and I was just using that. I can't remember how old I was by that point. Probably about eight or something like that."
GameMaker's the same software that Derek Yu used for Spelunky. For Silvester, it led to Roblox, which he likens to a "children's version of Garry's Mod". Roblox allows its players to make basic games quickly and easily - it teaches, in effect, a simple kind of programming. For a boy like this, Roblox was a revelation.
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