Founder and producer with 10+ years of experience across game production, design and studio building. I lead teams, shape pipelines and help turn ambitious ideas into shipped products at companies including Duckland Games and ZiBa Games.
My name is Zico Bakker. I’m a founder and producer based in Gouda, with 10+ years of experience across production, design and company building. I have founded and co-founded game businesses, helped grow studios, and shipped projects across Steam, mobile and live game environments.
My work is rooted in entrepreneurship. Through ventures such as ZiBa Games and Duckland Games, I have learned how to balance creative ambition with execution: building reliable pipelines, aligning cross-functional teams, managing stakeholders and keeping production moving from concept to release. I combine hands-on design insight with production leadership to help teams stay focused, collaborative and delivery-driven.
Shipped titles, student projects, game jams and live studio work. Click any card for details.
4-player party-game on Steam. PlushKyn take center stage as squishy misfits sprint, shove, spin and shoot through an attic full of games.
A language-learning app that makes vocabulary building fun through gamified exercises, streaks and progression. Live on iOS & Android in 10 languages.
From the moment we crash land on the strange and mysterious new world of Ascension, adventure calls. Action RPG on Unreal Engine 5.
Combat-free adventure-puzzle inspired by Norse Mythology. Play as Kari, a young viking girl finding her way home.
Final 2nd year project at Breda University. Steampunk-Japan overrun by yokai — pass a deadly disc with a friend to blaze through enemies.
1st-person stealth. Infiltrate a Soviet Mars-transit ship and rescue political prisoners. Evade enemies, collect clues, watch your sanity.
VR space-racing. Collect “space-time” in a psychedelic environment to extend the level and your life — procedurally generated every run.
Casual adventure in Christmas winter. Build a snowman under time pressure — with a custom Arduino controller as a constraint.
Play as a robot running on a battery. Power the battery from transmitters or sunlight. Solve puzzles before you run out.
Applied game for middle-schoolers learning basic math. Turn-based: answer questions to attack the dragon before it attacks you.
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Ascenders is a multi-year action RPG set on the world of Ascension, combining large-scale exploration, combat and long-term progression in a visually ambitious setting. The project was built with a clear AAA aspiration and a strong focus on world scale, team coordination and live community interest.
The game’s appeal starts with its sense of scale: dramatic environments, a sci-fantasy identity and a world designed to feel expansive from the first reveal. That kind of project ambition requires tight coordination between creative direction, production planning and execution across multiple disciplines.
Ascenders was positioned around multiple player paths, giving the project a broader gameplay promise than a single combat loop. Exploration, combat and economic play each had to be communicated clearly, both as game pillars and as part of the broader product vision.
In 2022, Ascenders announced a $6.4 million private investment round co-led by Paramount Capital, Three Arrows Capital, Sino Global Capital and Merit Circle, with additional participation from investors including DeFiance Capital, Blizzard Fund, Colony Labs and GuildFi. That raise helped expand the development team and gave the project the backing to pursue a larger production scope.
As producer, I managed cross-functional collaboration across design, engineering and art, kept the production pipeline aligned with the vision, and helped the team navigate the realities of a large, long-running open-world project with a high level of ambition.
Kari: Stranded On The Shores Of Vanaheim is a combat-free adventure-puzzle game inspired by Norse mythology. Stranded on unknown shores, the player guides Kari through a world built around exploration, story and environmental problem solving.
Kari stands out through its calm pacing, readable visual language and strong narrative tone. The project aimed to create an inviting adventure where atmosphere and clarity worked together, giving players a world that felt mysterious without becoming overwhelming.
I worked on the UI and technical implementation of systems such as the inventory, making sure players could quickly understand what they were carrying, how much space remained and how the interface responded across different input methods. That included feedback, transitions, descriptions and controller and keyboard support.
The crafting system had to clearly communicate requirements, missing resources and progression. My contribution focused on making the process intuitive in play, with clear prompts, responsive interactions and UI behavior that supported both the puzzle design and the overall rhythm of the game.
Beyond the core interface work, I contributed to several supporting systems that helped tie the experience together, including dialogue presentation, resource feedback at progression gates, end-game screens, cutscene skipping, rune design support and control scheme implementation.
As Tech & UI Designer, I worked closely with programmers and artists to translate design intent into usable in-game systems. My focus was on making interactions readable, polished and consistent, while helping connect UX decisions to the wider player journey.
A 4-player social party game where PlushKyn take center stage. You and up to 3 friends become squishy misfits who sprint, shove, spin and shoot their way through a pile of ridiculous challenges. 20+ party games, 5+ attic games, seasonal events, battle pass.
Forgotten Playland mixes fast competitive minigames with a playful toybox tone. The PlushKyn cast, oversized attic setting and bright social gameplay make the experience feel immediately readable while still leaving room for mastery and replayability.
The game is designed around repeat sessions, social friction and memorable match moments. Between the party games, progression systems and live beats, the experience supports both quick sessions and longer-term player retention.
From competitive challenges to playful traversal and interaction, the game creates variety by constantly shifting the player between different objectives, spaces and pacing. That range is a core part of what gives the attic its identity as a social playground.
As part of Duckland Games, this project also reflects the work behind the scenes: aligning the team, building a reliable production structure and preparing the game for a commercial release and ongoing live support.
Forgotten Playland also secured a $7 million funding round backed by Merit Circle, Spartan Group, C2 Ventures and Paper Ventures, among others. That raise gave the project more room to scale the team, widen the game’s scope and move the social party concept toward a larger commercial release.
Co-founder at Duckland Games B.V. (Breda). Helped set up the studio, shape the production pipeline and define the Steam release strategy.
Word Waves is a language-learning app that makes vocabulary building fun through gamified exercises, streaks and progression. Live on iOS and Android in 10 languages. Part of ZiBa Games.
Because Word Waves is built as a native mobile experience, the product is shaped around short sessions, clear onboarding and readable progression on phone-sized screens. These portrait screenshots highlight how the app guides users from setup into daily learning flow.
You (and ideally a friend) get thrown into steampunk-inspired Japan, overrun by yokai. By passing a deadly disc between each other you blaze through enemies and obstacles. Our custom-engine voxel world lets you cause mayhem the likes of which you’ve never seen.
I designed and balanced most enemies. Process: research Japanese Yokai, check whether gameplay mechanics support the enemy, then build designs with flowcharts and feature breakdowns, finally balance variables through lots of playtests. We focussed on specific enemy types to provide variety.
The focus on the spider was range: the player always had to have time to react after the spider shoots her web, because the player doesn’t always have the projectile — avoiding felt a bit more fair than usual.
The game was initially only designed for 2 players, but that limited our Itch.io audience for feedback. To prove adding single-player wasn’t risky I hid the second player behind the first with matching controls — a faked single-player mode. Players found it fun; proof it was worth building properly. A programmer then cleaned it up.
I created the UI during pre-production, with a lot of unknowns still present — mostly concepting at that stage. From there I ran the usual UI/UX process:
Interactive mockups in Axure XP to play out flow and surface gaps.
Journey map with persona based on research — most of this was new to me, but GDC talks and lots of iterations paid off.
Worked closely with artists on assets, lighting and layout sketches so we could build the level quickly. We went modular so it could expand if time allowed. My job was to stitch it all together — get assets from artists, make modular pieces line up with design sketches, and set up AI paths. I tested the whole experience including win/lose conditions.
Working closely with artists and programmers on assets, AI and audio made the enemy → level loop tight.
Create a snowman in a set amount of time while avoiding enemies. Move the main body through the level and collect items, place it in the placement zone, then spawn the head and do the same — landing it accurately on top.
First iteration on the showcase level — simulating the feel we wanted:
Last iteration — all moments implemented, final touches with snow on the roof:
Designed moments and puzzles for the player to discover high-level items and outfits for the snowman — kept playable given the Arduino controller’s responsiveness constraints.
