text: mikengreg mikengreg is an independent video game development team of mike boxleiter and greg wohlwend . their games include solipskier , gasketball , and touchtone . the two met in a game development class at iowa state university and later began to collaborate on the adobe flash game dinowaurs . when the project was funded , they founded intuition games with other college friends in ames , iowa , where they worked on small flash games such as gray , , and fig . 8 for flash game sites such as kongregate . dinowaurs was one of the first games signed for the kongregate platform . their other games involved controlling the weather , influencing individuals in a riot , and riding a bicycle . boxleiter and wohlwend worked on several additional games that were put on hiatus . they later became mikengreg in 2010 and released solipskier in august for both flash and ios later that year . its success let them take a more experimental approach towards their next game , the free - to - play gasketball . mikengreg ran out of money during the game 's development and the two lived on friends ' couches . the game was reviewed favorably upon its august 2012 launch , but did not earn near the developers ' estimates . their next game , touchtone ( 2015 ) , spent two years in development . intuition games boxleiter and wohlwend met in an experimental video game development class at iowa state university . wohlwend had attempted to help boxleiter with a project , but quit after drawing a few aliens . boxleiter said he " didn 't like [ wohlwend ] much after that " . they met again as coworkers at the university 's virtual reality application center during boxleiter 's final year of college ( wohlwend 's penultimate year ) . upon discovering their close interests , they began to work on an adobe flash game named dinowaurs while they completed college . boxleiter graduated in 2007 with a degree in computer science , and wohlwend a year later with a degree in graphic design . they concluded that they needed a company to make money while they worked on the game with collaborators , and around may 2007 , founded intuition games at the university 's research park . they decided to stay in ames , iowa due to its financial feasibility and local connections , but two other members of the team , josh larson and ted martens , lived in des moines and chicago , respectively . the team met as students at iowa state through work and game development circles . they saw flash games as an easy entry point into full - time self - employment , but planned to eventually work on console platforms such as wiiware . before dinowaurs , the team made a game about a destructive porpoise , which was abandoned when dinowaurs received funding . in their development process , boxleiter and wohlwend both proposed and worked on each other 's ideas , and would drop the ideas they found unexciting . the two also built games from keywords and brainstorming , and would flesh out the game mechanics through " heated " argument . their labor as a team was divided in that wohlwend always did the art and boxleiter the programming , as reflective of their skills at the time . the pair agreed to an assessment of their partnership as " left - brain right - brain " , and agreed that " editing " — the process of iterating through revisions — was central to their joint work . as they worked , they always retained their prototypes . they both appreciated the " creative freedom " of being self - employed , though they struggled with the business aspects , relative workplace " isolation " , low salaries , and lack of job stability . both were motivated to do their own work instead of contracted tasks . they thought of themselves as artists and of their work as experimental . boxleiter and wohlwend worked long hours when making the flash games , which they found exciting and unsustainable . at intuition , they worked on games such as dinowaurs , gray , fig . 8 , and liferaft and participated in at least six game jams . as of april 2010 , they had created 10 games together . dinowaurs intuition 's first game , dinowaurs , is a strategy and action game where two players compete as dinosaurs to seize the most cavemen settlements on a single screen . captured settlements provide resources for upgrades to the players ' dinosaurs . the object of this arms race is to kill the other dinosaur . it features online matchmaking . the game was built from an unfinished flash - based multiplayer strategy game started by boxleiter and an image of a stegosaurus with a jetpack drawn by martens . the team combined the concepts for a strategy game about dinosaurs fighting for food . they struggled with long - distance communication , but used a project management website and skype to stay in touch . when looking for a platform , intuition originally pitched the game with a clay dinosaur to adult swim — who was funding flash games — but was declined for not being " edgy enough " . in june , they then tried then - new flash site kongregate via a connection larson had made with its ceo jim greer at the 2007 game developers conference . he asked the team to wait for their new director of games to be hired , who ended up being intuition 's contact at adult swim . the contact had liked the idea and thought the game worked better for kongregate than did for adult swim , and so funded the game by november 2007 as one of the first five for the kongregate platform . the package was a one - year browser exclusivity agreement that let intuition keep the intellectual property . dinowaurs was finished in two years for a 2009 release . their later games would only take a few months apiece in comparison . they abandoned the use of design documents after dinowaurs , and instead chose to refine and experiment in process . indiegames.com reported mixed reviews from players and recommended the game as " good solid fun " for newcomers and veterans . the escapist described the game as similar to scorched earth and " surprisingly complex " with its need for three tutorials . he complimented its " faux - retro " soundtrack and aesthetics , which he felt outweighed the learning curve 's difficulty . other games intuition released effing hail and gray around april 2009 . players in action game effing hail control hail and wind to destroy the most buildings and midair objects within a time limit . the hail grows in size when the wind is used to suspend it in air . the game was published through kongregate . as an example of their more experimental games , intuition built gray — a game about " political consciousness " — as a result of their frustrations during the 2008 u.s. presidential election . players control a single character and try to end a riot by influencing other individuals in the crowd . the game was featured at indiecade in 2009 . fig . 8 . is based on one of wohlwend 's college art projects . it went unused on their whiteboard for four months until they needed an idea , whereupon boxleiter added game mechanics to the visuals . it took about ten hours to prototype the controls , and they tested a ten - wheel bike before deciding on two . the scrolling camera was inspired by a game boxleiter had been playing called string theory , and they added the soundtrack last . fig . 8 was funded by a sponsor . boxleiter considers gray and fig . 8 to be " small games " . as projects , he considered them " more like vacations ... than actual work " . intuition attempted to fund their next game , liferaft , via crowdfunding site kickstarter . the game is set in a single day within an " abandoned testing facility ... in a post - apocalyptic sci - fi " world . the player - character is a young woman named goss who had been surviving off of lichen until a giant squid crashes into the room and allows her escape . liferaft was built for release in three episodes : her escape , " revelation " , and " resolution " . the core gameplay revolves around a " bionic commando - style grappling hook " . intuition released a two - level flash demo where the game had 16 - bit era graphics and music composed by danny baranowsky of canabalt and fathom . they expected development to take six months between november 2009 and february 2010 . they canceled the kickstarter and put the project on hiatus in october 2009 for two small flash games and an intern 's unity project . in march 2010 and under the moniker mikengreg , boxleiter and wohlwend 's 4fourths was chosen among six games out of more than 150 submissions for inclusion in kokoromi 's gamma iv showcase . submissions were based on the theme of " one button games " . the four - player game is played with two teams each controlling spaceships on each side of the screen . one player on each team controls the ship 's vertical height and the other fires the guns , which aim towards the center of the screen . since every player only has one button , the vertical height controls boost the ship vertically when the button is pressed and leaves the ship to slowly descend when unpressed . the teams work together to shoot at and destroy enemy boss ships that travel through the center of the screen . teams can also shoot each other 's ships as friendly fire is activated . the game was displayed at gamma iv in san francisco and at the 2010 game developers conference . 4fourths was michael rose of 's favorite game of the gamma iv selections . it was later chosen for brandon boyer 's wild rumpus london event in september 2011 . mikengreg announced liferaft : zero and solipskier in november 2010 . the former is a " prequel teaser " to the flash platform game liferaft that they had announced the previous year , a game of trial - based challenges with wall - jumping and grappling wherein girl clones attempt to swing and jump around test chambers to reach and ring a bell . wohlwend and boxleiter made the shorter version to limit the scope creep of the overall project . indiegames.com named the flash game their third best browser platformer of the year . their other game , 4fourths , was put on hiatus for lack of resources . they were interested in making games outside the flash market . solipskier their first game as mikengreg was solipskier , where the player 's finger draws the ground for the on - screen skier to pass through a level filled with gates , tunnels , and walls . it was designed as a flash game , which set the limitations for its mechanics . the game concept came from a brainstorming session about parallax scrolling , and was revised in fits of creativity . they paired the parallax scrolling with speed and began to prototype . boxleiter first understood its potential when publishers fought for the bid to the game . they then decided to develop for ios in addition to flash , and to release both versions simultaneously . it was released on august 29 , 2010 and became their first game to receive public appreciation . solipskier for ios made around $ 70 , 000 in its first two months ( as compared to $ 15 , 000 from the flash release ) , which gave them enough stability to branch out into non - flash platforms . boxleiter spoke at the 2012 game developers conference indie soapbox on how indie stars were made from hard work and not from the independent games festival . he added that winning an award at the festival for solipskier was an insignificant aspect of his career . gasketball riding the earnings from solipskier , mikengreg continued to pay themselves their same salary but now had the means to try new ideas . wohlwend estimated that they discarded about six " fairly polished prototypes " over the development of their next game , gasketball . they were able to live on $ 20 – 25 , 000 a year each in iowa for the next two years while working on the new game . wohlwend made somewhat more income due to other collaborations , such as puzzlejuice with asher vollmer , but shared his income with boxleiter . even though solipskier was successful , the duo did not have a following comparable to indie developers like team meat and thus felt like their external pressure was low . instead , their pressure was internal . wohlwend said he worked 100 - hour weeks with no weekends or vacations while living off of the solipskier funds . in making gasketball , boxleiter and wohlwend felt that their game quality had improved continually , but found the idea of a million - person audience " daunting " and wohlwend questioned whether he could even recreate solipskier 's success . when they ran out of money , boxleiter borrowed money from his parents , and eventually they both went homeless , living off of the couches of friends . gasketball was released for ipad on august 9 , 2012 . they had decided to release the game as what they deemed to be an ethically non - coercive free - to - play game , with a free base game and in - app purchases for the extended content . not as many players paid for the content as expected . this was due , in part , to the players ' difficulty in finding the purchase function . the game had been downloaded 200 , 000 times in its august 2012 launch week and was briefly ranked near the top of an itunes top downloads ranking , though it did not break the top 200 grossing chart . touchtone after gasketball 's release , boxleiter and wohlwend planned a celebratory road trip to a game jam in victoria , british columbia . the game did not fare as expected , so boxleiter wanted to use the jam to create " something new , ... something really small and perfect " . by the end of the two - day jam , the core mirror reflection mechanics of touchtone were in place , though it would take two years of sporadic work to finalize the remainder of the game . in touchtone , the player monitors phone calls as part of a government surveillance program to find public threats . the story is told through a series of reflection puzzles wherein the player swipes the screen to reflect a beam around a room to its intended destination . mikengreg felt that their first theme of light , prisms , and audio signal too closely mimicked " a hacking minigame from a bigger aaa game like bioshock or system shock " , but eventually paired the concept with a satirical edward snowden theme following the mid - 2013 global surveillance disclosures . their original efforts were jocular , but their concept became more serious as the story and " political message " grew deeper . boxleiter wrote most of the script , which is over 20 , 000 words . it was his first effort at professional writing , and it took him five months . he and wohlwend would conference after each chapter for coherency . boxleiter wanted the story to explore the " questions ... floating around the national consciousness " rather than be " heavy - handed " and prescriptive . they playtested the game in public at the theater in logan square , chicago , though they acknowledged difficulty in playtesting the story 's private experience . mikengreg decided against including an option to skip puzzles , which they felt would spoil the game and the player 's capacity to adapt to increasing difficulty . they called this philosophy the " derek yu ( of spelunky ) school of game design " . touchtone was released on march 19 , 2015 for ios . review aggregator metacritic characterized its reviews as generally favorable .