Bulut
Karakaya

With over 16 years in game development, I’ve led programming and technical direction on award-winning games including Monument Valley 3, Desta: The Memories Between, and Star Trek: Fleet Command. My work spans gameplay architecture, team leadership, production delivery, and turning uncertain prototypes into shipped products.

Before founding Second River, I was Head of Game Development at Philosopher King, an AI-native studio, where I rebuilt the game architecture in Unity and worked hands-on with language models as game systems rather than as a content generator.

I’m now co-founder of Second River Games, an independent studio in Cambridge making simulation and management games, starting with Village of Whispers, where player language shapes character behaviour, belief, and emergent storytelling. I’m interested in practical, grounded uses of AI that create new forms of play rather than simply adding generative content on top.