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As it happened, that fell pretty much exactly in line with the company motto - "A game for everyone is a game for no-one". I also remember, from that interview, getting to meet my future canine coworker Ärra, an adorable German Shepherd Doggo, who greeted me at the door.

Long story short (too late), I came away from the two interviews with an impression that here is a genuinely great group of people, welcoming, happy, helpful, who want to make the best game they can rather than just pushing something out before its time.

I shortly had an offer in-hand, I accepted gladly, and in July 2017, I started working here. When I mentioned having a boyfriend, nobody batted an eye. When I took my fursuit to the office for the annual Halloween party, everyone got a kick out of it. Like I said: Welcoming!

Now, I was initally hired on as a gameplay programmer. About five months into my six-month trial employment, the de facto lead of the gameplay team invited me to a quick 1:1 interview. Having been burned by the industry before, I thought to myself, "Jeez, this is it."

On the contrary, he said to me: "You seem to have a very methodical way of approaching code. Which is great! The company needs more people like that. It just doesn't quite jibe with the quick prototyping needed for gameplay. But you seem to really like doing UI-"

"-How would you feel about us making a dedicated UI team to put you on, and hiring a dedicated UI artist/designer?" Now, I've done UI-related work, just by pure happenstance, at every previous job in the industry I've had. "Dude, seriously?" I asked. "That would be AWESOME!"

And so that was what they did: Unlike almost every other company I've worked for, where if you don't fit into a given box you're either forced to or told to get lost, they opted to build on what I'm good at, rather than fruitlessly hammering on the deficit.

Ultimately, over the past two years, the people I'm lucky enough to call my coworkers have proven themselves time and time again to be the sort of folks who will extend a helping hand to bring you up, not a beating hand to knock you down. Everyone simply has everyone else's back.