Hi! I am Thomas Sauerzapf, 30 years old and living at the eastern end of the alps in austria.
Since i was a child i was fascinated about how games work and it did not take long until i began modding old GTA-Games. But it did take long until i finally began to make my own games…
My first steps into gamedev was playing around with the “A7-Game Engine” from a company called Conitek in germany. But i got carried away from game development and life got in the way. But my passion for games never faded…
It was 2020 when a known disease changed the way we live (at least for a while) and a gaming friend of mine asked on twitter if somebody wanted to participate at the “Stay Safe Jam”. I was interested, but did not know lots about programming and the last time i drew something was over 10 years ago in school. But i wanted to be part of it anyway. This decision influenced my life from this point on in a massive way.
I was hooked and wanted to learn the thing all those talented people did! So while i was off work because of Covid, i learnt C++, C#, Unreal Engine, a bit of Unity and Blender. Gamejams began to be a big hobby of mine which led to the creation of a dedicated Gamjam-Discordserver with now nearly 400 people.
In this time i also choosed to enroll into a degree in Gamedesign at the IU-University. There i found a lot of dedicated people which became friends and important contacts to work with up until this day and gained lots of experience with the countless projects we did together.
But i found out, that this was too theoretically for me, so i ditched that…but maybe I’ll give this another try someday.
Since today i worked on 35 games, organized over 27 Gamejams within our community and hosted 3 jamsites for Global-Gamejam.
I found love in teaching people and therefore i am currently giving my second Unreal Engine beginner course on our private university Discord.
And here i am….i like dogs, chocolate, crisps and cars.
If you want to know anything specific, let me know.