Autumn Dynasty co-creator nearly chose dentistry over game development

Several years ago, Jeffrey Jiang agreed to help Travis Ho with the graphics programming in the latter’s game, and history was made. The Singaporean duo went on to form Touch Dimensions and produce Autumn Dynasty, an iPad game that took the world by surprise.

Autumn Dynasty combined real-time strategy with ancient China. Gestures on the iPad screen translated into brush strokes a la Okami, Chinese troops ran hither-thither on screen, and it was enchanting.

Just a year later in 2014, Touch Dimensions self-published Autumn Dynasty: Warlords a real-time strategy and city management—and are planning for an expansion. The company looks set to soar, but before you can fly, you always need to learn to walk. How did Touch Dimensions go from a simple skill trade-off between programmers to the game development studio it is today?

(See: Autumn Dynasty: Warlords review: conquerin’ ain’t easy)

33 year old Jeffrey Jiang used to work at a local startup called Envisage Reality. Back then, 29 year old Travis Ho was also working part time for the same outfit. That was how the two founders of Touch Dimensions met.

Ho eventually let slip to Jiang that he was working on a real-time strategy game project inspired by Playstation 2 game Okami, and that he needed help with the graphics programming. Coincidentally, Jiang also needed help with the AI of the game he was working on. As was the current practice between Travis and Envisage Reality back then, they decided to do a trade.

But it was more than just a simple trade. Jiang and Ho had “a lot of fun” working together, and when Jiang realized that Envisage Reality no longer wanted to work on games, he suggested they commercialize the Autumn Dynasty project.

Autumn Dynasty had never been meant to be the commercial success it is today. In fact, it had originally been created just for the Independent Games Festival in 2009. “After [Travis] had done the game, the plan was for him to say, let’s stop making games, and go into dentistry,” Jiang shared.

I’d rather have a nifty iPad game than a skewer in my mouth.

Ho hailed from a medical background, and his family wanted him to continue in their footsteps. He studied computational biology at the National University of Singapore, and taught himself to program by cloning 8-bit games. At that point, Ho was in the midst of his hiatus from school, a hiatus he had taken especially to do his final game project. But he agreed.

Touch Dimensions began in July 2009. Jiang and Ho set up a base of operations in the basement of Ho’s house and started work.