Andrew Augustin
Quick Facts
Biography
Andrew Augustin (born May 22, 1988 in Mount Vernon, New York) is an American video game designer, 2d artist, and founder of Notion Games, LLC. He currently resides in Austin, Texas and is best known for Super Ubie Island REMIX, Up Up Ubie REMIX, and Team Notion.
Education
Augustin received a full scholarship and a $10,000 stipend to be in the 2014-2015 inaugural class for the Denius-Sams Gaming Academy at the University of Texas.
Career
In 2011, Augustin worked at Edge of Reality in Austin, Texas where he designed over 400 characters for The Sims 3: Pets (Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions) and created concept art for a cancelled project.
Notion Games
After working on The Sims 3: Pets, Augustin founded Notion Games and released his first title Up Up Ubi for iOS in January, 2012. Augustin states in the C2 podcast that the programmer for Notion Games left the video game industry after work on Up Up Ubi was complete. To get around the problem of having no programmer, Augustin taught himself how to program using Scirra's Construct 2 game engine and created a small prototype featuring his character, Ubie, in a 2d platforming adventure similar to Super Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong Country. Augustin states the Construct 2 community gave very positive feedback and the prototype quickly became one of the top games in the Scirra Arcade. Augustin decided to take the prototype and create a full game which soon became Super Ubie Land.
On February 22, 2013, Augustin launched a Kickstarter campaign to help complete the PC version of Super Ubie Land and to purchase a Wii U development kit to bring the game to Nintendo's system. The Kickstarter project was successfully funded on April 8, 2013 after raising $6,333 surpassing the funding goal of $5,000. Super Ubie Land was released for Windows, Mac, and Linux in August 2013 and greenlit on Steam Greenlight in December, 2014. Super Ubie Land, which is what the game exists as now, was initially called Super Ubi Land but Nintendo requested that Notion Games contact Ubisoft to make sure that there was no conflict with using 'Ubi' in the game's title. After some discussion, Notion and Ubisoft agreed that 'Ubie' was a good compromise. In another turn of events, Nintendo then asked Notion to change the name again and Notion ended up renaming Super Ubie Land to Super Ubie Island. Super Ubie Land is in development for the Wii U and will be released as Super Ubie Island for video game consoles.
Augustin is currently producing his latest project, Team Notion. Pure Nintendo Magazine is documenting thedevelopment process of Team Notion in until the project is complete.
Ludography
- The Sims 3: Pets (2011), Electronic Arts (world builder and character designer)
- Up Up Ubi (2012), Notion Games (game designer, artist)
- Super Ubie Land (2013), Notion Games (game designer, programmer, artist)
- Astro Vault (2013), Notion Games (game designer, artist)
- Up Up Ubie REMIX (2014), Notion Games (game designer, programmer, artist)
- The Calm Before (2015), Denius Sams Gaming Academy and University of Texas (concept artist, art director, creative director)
- Super Ubie Island REMIX (2016), Notion Games (game Designer, programmer, artist)
- Team Notion (2017), Notion Games (game designer, programmer, artist)
- Sheep Herder Nay (2017), Notion Games (game designer, programmer, artist)
Awards and honours
- Augustin was listed in the 2015 Forbes' 30 Under 30 class in the games category at the age of 26.
- Augustin was listed in the 2015 Black Enterprise Modern Man list.
- The Austin Chronicle named Andrew Augustin as the best graphic designer in Austin, Texas in the 2007 Best of Austin award.
- Atlanta Blackstar named Augustin in their "5 African-Americans Making an Impact in the Video Game Industry" list.
- Austin Hallock has named Super Ubie Land in the top 10 HTML5 games of 2013 list published on Gamasutra