11th Dimension Entertainment

Overview

11th Dimension Entertainment is a game development studio founded in 1990 by Matthew Engle and Daniel Berke. They have been collaborating on computer games since the dark days of junior high school. The idea first came to them while having lunch at Farmer's Market, on Third Street and Fairfax for those of you familiar with Los Angeles, and before long the two were off and running. They began by writing text adventure game parodies of the famous Zork series, and over the years honed their game design and programming expertise. The culmination of this phase occurred in 1989, when they won the Grand Prize at the Rockwell Computer Science Competition for their game Skyland's Star. In 1990, they released Skyland's Star into the shareware market.

By now the two had formed Eleventh Dimension Entertainment, but the market for text adventures was shrinking fast. Matt and Dan turned toward another source of inspiration, the Ultima series, and the seeds of Excelsior were born. Over the course of nearly three years, the two designed and wrote Excelsior Phase One: Lysandia. It was released through shareware, and much to their surprise turned out to be quite a success.

The two then turned their attention to the sequel. Excelsior Phase Two: Errondor would be bigger, better and more advanced in every way, and it ended up consuming nearly five years of their lives.

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