Eric Foster
CEO & Creative Director
Eric left university in 2008 to join Relic Entertainment as an assistant producer. During his 4 years there he was able to channel his passion into titles such as Warhammer 40k: Space Marine as a producer, as well as contributing to the level design on Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine, Company of Heroes 2 and Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium Online. While in Vancouver, he also met and married his lovely wife, Holly, who would one day become the writer for Horrible Unicorn.
In 2012, Eric made the jump to WB Montreal to continue working on narrative based action games, the first of which was Batman: Arkham Origins, which he was more than happy to work on. There he continued to grow his expertise in creating “flavour” encounters and exotic gameplay levels. After shipping Batman, the pieces had finally fallen into place. It was time to finally start Horrible Unicorn Game Studios.
Eric Serio
Lead Programmer
Eric was once ranked in PSN’s top 50 Street Fighter 4 (Vanilla) players in the World. That alone qualifies him to be here. But he’s also been programming since he was 12, beginning on a super old computer with kilobytes of RAM and audio limited to nothing but beeps. Years later he progressed to being an award-winning 2D game programmer, making several 2D RPG’s like the games he loved to play when he was a child. The next logical step was 3D, prompting him to create his first physics engine and user generated content game called 3D Pong Builder. When he’s not up to his eyeballs in code, he’s playing video game music, such as the Final Fantasy 6 boss Theme, on his keyboard and editing the sound clip “Game Over Man, GAME OVER!” into his games when the characters die. Now he’s looking forward to creating fun and exciting games with Horrible Unicorn!
Joe Pendon
Lead Artist
Joe has been a professional pixel pusher for his whole art career and loved every minute of it. Coming from the days of SNES RPGs and refusing to let go of those golden days, he’s tailored himself into a traditional, yet modern, pixel artist. He strives to mix a retro style with today’s technical possibilities and tools to create art that appeals to everyone – from nostalgics to modern indie fans to people who just appreciate unique and eye-catching digital artwork. His goal for every project is to create experiences that are fun, immerse, and attract more fans and players.
Green Pixel, his own freelance pixel art company has made several projects, and he personally created and still maintains The Pocalypse, a pixel art Flash web comic. Now, with Horrible Unicorn, he looks forward to creating another awesome and memorable experience!
Holly McCullough
Writer
Holly has had multiple articles published on lonelyplanet.com and in Vancouver’s daily newspaper The Province. She’s also written a debut novel. Her constant hunger for inspiration also manifested itself in a hardcore addiction to travel, which has led her into a successful 10-year career in the travel industry. Merging her two passions, she also maintained the travel blog anotherpinonthemap.com.
She was reintroduced to gaming in 2008 by Eric Foster when they began dating; before that, all her spare cash had gone towards plane tickets, not consoles, though she did (and still does) have a fully functional NES and love of classic Super Mario Bros. 3. Through Eric she discovered just how good she was at Rock Band. Now she looks forward to bringing the “feels” to Horrible Unicorn, and creating not only an entertaining game experience but one players are emotionally invested in.
Richard Drozdik
Narrative Design
Richard’s first gaming console was a Pong set-top box, followed quickly by a ColecoVision and a Vic 20 PC. He grew up with a rich exposure to the latest computing technologies, access to a large library of SF/Fantasy literature, and wrangled his way into rpg gaming as soon as he possibly could (because one hardcover book said ages 8 and up, when all the rest set the bar at 10).
During university he always felt the pull between his passion for storytelling and love of computing, but eventually graduated with a degree in Computing Science. The dot com bubble burst while Richard was looking for his first job in 2002, and he was”forced” to settle for a job in Quality Assurance at Electronic Arts, beginning a now 13 year (and counting) career in the video game industry. Richard has worked at such companies as Relic Entertainment (alongside future HUGS CEO, Eric), THQ Montreal, Ubisoft, and now Horrible Unicorn Game Studios.
Working mainly in the fields of Quality Assurance, Game Production, and Game Submissions, Richard has never lost that bug for telling great stories, and when Eric offered him a position helping Horrible Unicorn with Narrative Design he jumped at the chance.
Jeffery Simpson
Manager, Communications & PR
Five years ago Jeffery Simpson had the poor sense to leave a perfectly fine job that provided a healthy income and steady employment to join the video game industry. He was hired on at award winning strategy studio Relic Entertainment just as its publisher THQ began to go out of business; Jeffery was on the community team for Company of Heroes: Online, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War – Retribution and Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine.
Before THQ could downsize him Jeffery moved to Electronic Arts’ Burnaby studio where for some reason they allowed him to work on games like EA SPORTS NHL 13, EA SPORTS SSX and EA SPORTS UFC. Rather than wait around until they realized that he had no idea what he was doing Jeffery returned to Relic after its purchase by SEGA to work on the launch of Company of Heroes 2 and to build the studio’s new community team as Community Manager.
Now Jeffery is heading up Horrible Unicorn’s marketing, PR and community efforts in the role of Manager, Communications & PR. Like a chubby social media Swiss Army knife he’s doing a bit of everything as the studio works towards launching its first game Legacy of the Copper Skies.
- Location: British Columbia, Canada
Jakob Eirich
Concept Artist – Contractor
Jakob is an artist from Germany who specializes in illustration, concept art, and storyboarding. He enjoys working with all kinds of media, from traditional sculpting and painting to animation and digital art, and tends to take clients from the games, animation, advertising, and book industries. In fact, some of his previous clients include familiar companies such as HarperCollins Publishing and Ubisoft. Jakob is also a vegan and hopes to one day work on a blockbuster movie. Until then, he’s helping Horrible Unicorn to bring our game to life and allow it to grow into something awesome.