First off, happy New Year, everyone. Yes, it is belated. Yes, it is still early enough to wish people a good 2026 (please don’t post this article in August). [Eds note: Tempting… so very tempting…]
Welcome back to the column where we discover the unsung heroes of the games we love!
Today, I decided to shine the spotlight on someone on the other end of the globe, but on the other end of our country (unless you are reading this from that same end. Then they might just be your neighbour).
Rodain Joubert is a name you might have come across when leafing through the old NAG Magazines (or if you were only looking for Roxy, then you might have missed ’em).
Back in the day, they were more or less the correspondent of all things local in game development.
Rodain had a monthly column that usually offered sage advice on aspiring South African programmers, divulged news on game jams and other events around the continent and shared prototypes and post-mortems on games made by their own hand.
During their writing, Rodain was also a massive ambassador for “Make Games South Africa“, which once upon a time had wildly active forums on the Internet, attracting many eyes to check out what was being made right here in Mzansi (MGSA exists still to this day!
Their Discord community is awesome, and there are tons of projects that might be to your fancy.
In 2011, Rodain had been tinkering with a game for a while and would act as the chief game designer of Desktop Dungeons, which, as you may have guessed, is a PC game about dungeons.
Releasing the game onto Steam under the publisher QCF Design (a friend of Rodain’s business), it has over 300,000 downloads, got a prize at the 2011 Independent Games Festival, and even had a clone of it released on the iStore (if you have clones of your games releasing, you know you made it).
Going forward, Rodain would be involved in a ton of unique local game projects (such as a dating sim on HIV awareness, working with the Western Cape government to use games to address social problems, doing lectures on gamification) and even worked in a consulting role for other studios such as Celestial Games (ye of Toxic Bunny fame, that probably caused everyone playing it to develop a caffeine addiction).
Currently, Rodain is working as a UX designer at a Cape-based studio called Sea Monster, where they are developing “impact games” in Roblox for local businesses such as Nedbank and Allan Gray to educate users while they are playing.
And just like that one Schuster fliek, this first column of 2026 is short and sweet.
Who knows? Maybe one day NAG will start developing games once they review all of them (or just after they review GTA VI, because life will be complete).
I know where they can find a good consultant from local shores.
About BigMacDaddy:
BigMacDaddy is a rockstar, MLG gamer and world-renowned knowledge base for all gaming studios… in his dreams.
In real life, he is a full-time software developer and loves family time. His hobbies include a lil’ YouTubing, chess, game development and travel.
