Fact Sheet

Founding Date: July 16th 2011

Platforms:

Developer: Stellar Jockeys Location: Chicago, IL & Austin, TX

🔗 Links

📧 Contact: General/Business: [email protected] Press: [email protected]

Description

Stellar Jockeys are the developers of Brigador: Up-Armored Edition (2016) and the upcoming title Brigador Killers (intended for 2023).

Stellar Jockeys was started by brothers Hugh and Jack Monahan, who endeavor to give players the sort of lovingly detailed and hand crafted game experiences they grew up with in the golden era of PC gaming. In a stunning display of international solidarity, they hired their favorite Canadian, Karl Parakenings, and also work with the rare Irishman in Paris, Benjamin Glover. Makeup and Vanity Set is a regular collaborator who to date has scored all SJ projects. Together, their goal is nothing less than total domination of dark science fiction action games with too much lore in them.

History

Foundation

Created in 2011, the original Stellar Jockeys team included programmers Harry Hsiao and Dale Kim who wrote the company's engine and back-end. Prior to co-founding Stellar Jockeys, Jack Monahan was the lead level designer on Darkest of Days (2009) and author of the well-regarded Design Reboot blog. Hugh worked as a teacher and freelance illustrator until switching to full-time management and design for the studio.

The Brigador Years

Originally titled Matador, Brigador and the studio were officially announced February 1st, 2014, and first publicly demoed at PAX Prime 2015. Brad Buckmaster began serving as a technical consultant in 2014 while authoring the Brigador novelization that launched alongside the game (edited by Benjamin Glover and adapted as an audiobook voiced by Ryan Cooper). Karl Parakenings joined the core team as a writer in 2016 and would later take on programming duties as well. Brigador released into Early Access October 16th, 2015, launched 1.0 on June 2nd, 2016, and re-launched as Brigador: Up-Armored Edition on June 2nd, 2017. The development of Brigador was entirely self-funded.

Life After Launch

Following the 1.0 launch in 2016, Harry Hsiao and Dale Kim parted the studio amicably for programming jobs at AAA studios. Meanwhile, Brigador continued to receive a number of updates post-release while internally development began on a followup title, Brigador Killers, which was announced early 2019. In 2020, content creator MandaloreGaming reviewed Brigador, which led to the team updating the game once more for 2021’s Blood Anniversary Update. Afterwards, Stellar Jockeys returned to development on Brigador Killers with the goal of releasing in 2023.