Drew K. Kennedy
Hello, visitor.
I'm Drew — a game developer and content creator based in Austin, TX, with 10+ years of shipped titles and an audience of 350,000+ subscribers who trust me to know video game history cold.
By day I'm a Senior Software Engineer II at Pocket Worlds, where I own the live event world gameplay experiences that ship to thousands of Highrise players every week — concept to code to live ops. I also architected, built, and operate the company's internal AI platform: an agentic analyst that answers cross-team questions with cited data from production systems, for every discipline from leadership to community. The thesis: every question it absorbs is an expert interruption that didn't happen — and the value compounds with every discipline it spans.
Before that: co-created and shipped C.A.R.L. to PC and every major console, led development on Draw a Stickman: EPIC 2, and spent a decade making Nintendrew the internet's home for retro gaming deep dives. I also compose, edit, and do voiceover — the full production stack, one person.
Austin, TX. Two cats. One very complete N64 library. Make yourself at home — the guestbook is at the bottom.
Selected work.
| Title | Year | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Highrise — Event WorldsNEW! | 2025–now | Sr. Software Eng. II | I lead engineering on the live event gameplay shipped to thousands of players weekly — design, systems, live ops — and built HR Stream, the platform that lets live video hosts run interactive events like Bingo and Trivia. (Pocket Worlds) |
| Internal AI Platform | 2025–now | Architect & Owner | Designed, built, and operate Pocket Worlds' company-wide AI analyst solo — consolidating a fleet of single-purpose bots into one agentic platform spanning 20+ live data sources. Cited, verified answers from production systems; every action human-approved. Serves every discipline: leadership, data, ops, engineering, trust & safety, community. |
| OmniCast | 2026 | Solo Developer | A surreal web game about surviving an avalanche of popups — mini-games, scam chats, a stock ticker, and a virtual pet, all living inside the windows attacking you. The (much politer) popup engine haunting this very site is its licensed descendant. |
| C.A.R.L. | 2022 | Co-Creator / Dev | Retro-style platformer built with Matt Bitner, in the lineage of Cave Story and Jazz Jackrabbit. Steam, Switch, PlayStation, Xbox. |
| Draw a Stickman: EPIC 2 | 2015 | Lead Developer | Led development of the draw-your-own-hero sequel. C#/Unity, shipped across desktop and mobile, later ported to Switch. |
| Battlepillars | 2014 | Developer (of two) | Real-time strategy with heavily armed caterpillars, built by a two-person team. iOS, Android, and Steam. |
| Draw a Stickman: EPIC | 2012 | Developer | Core gameplay engineering on the original. Tens of millions of downloads across six platforms. |
| Prototypes & Tools | ongoing | Everything | Playable experiences built in Unreal (UEFN), a browser voxel sandbox with procedural textures and synthesized audio, AI-assisted music tooling, homebrew experiments. Ask me about these. |
Earlier credits published under Andrew Kenady — full list on MobyGames.
The channel.
Since 2016 I've hosted Nintendrew, a YouTube channel dedicated to video game history and preservation — obscure prototypes, ambitious homebrew, console mods, and the hardware everyone else forgot.
Practically, that's a decade of scripting, shooting, editing, scoring, and publishing broadcast-quality video on a schedule, plus the audience instincts that come from a comment section 350,000 strong. Frequent collaborations with Scott the Woz, Nathaniel Bandy, SMG4, and SimpleFlips.
For a studio, that means a developer who can also speak publicly, demo convincingly, and represent the product — conventions included. I'm a recurring guest at Retropalooza, and the channel is listed on IMDb.
Experience.
Lead engineering of weekly live-service gameplay events for Highrise, shipping player-facing content on fixed production cadences in Unity/C#. Designed and built HR Stream, a gameplay platform that lets live video hosts run interactive events like Bingo and Trivia. Separately, architected and operate the company's internal AI platform end-to-end — plus generative AI pipelines for marketing creative and agent-assisted engineering workflows across the org.
Writing, filming, scoring, and editing for a 350,000+ subscriber YouTube channel — reviews, retrospectives, DIY builds, and retro collecting, produced solo since 2016.
Designed and developed C.A.R.L., a 2D puzzle-platformer released on PC, Switch, Xbox, and PlayStation — core gameplay systems in Unity/C#, cross-platform build pipelines, and platform-specific deployment in a two-person team.
Owned the code base and build management end-to-end; developed rapid prototypes for Karobi, an unreleased AR card battle game.
Built and iterated on multiple simultaneously-developed Unity titles for an unannounced project in a closed-door R&D lab.
Core gameplay engineering, then small-team leadership, across Draw a Stickman: EPIC 1 & 2 and Battlepillars — C# with XNA and Unity, shipping to Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, and Windows Phone.
Graduated from the nation's #1-ranked high school (Newsweek, three consecutive years), then returned as a computer science tutor.
A conventional one-page résumé is available on request — email me.
Also in the toolkit.
Original composition and scoring, chiptune to full production. Game soundtracks a specialty.
Listen →Character and commercial VO. Credits include announcer work for SMG4. Reels on request.
Request reels →Convention panels, guest spots, and developer talks. Comfortable on any stage. Con bookings go through my representation.
Book me via Malice Media →Get in touch.
Hiring or collaborating? I answer everything personally, usually fast. For convention and event bookings, contact Malice Media.
Cool links (mine):