Hi, I'm Dylan Abry! Welcome to the Steppasphere!!

Point Zero

My journey into game development started as a toddler who pulled every last book off the shelf in my bedroom and scattered them across the floor. One by one, I'd read each book, engaged in its plot and amazed by its artwork. This became the catalyst for my passion for creative media—something that would undergo a long evolution throughout my life, from writing stories to eventually developing games.

By the time I was five, I had started moving beyond reading stories and began writing and illustrating my own, viewing creativity as an escape from the stresses of the real world. Every day after finishing my homework, I'd sit at my "work seat"—a corner chair at the dining room table—with a stack of paper, a 64-pack of Crayola crayons, and get to work. That routine gradually changed once I discovered Big Nate comics and became increasingly interested in visual storytelling. Maybe a little too interested: inspired by Nate himself, I started drawing sketches during class, sometimes even of my teachers, occasionally getting myself into trouble—especially during binder checks!

Despite earning a reputation among my grade school peers as a class clown because of my desire to give others something to laugh about every day, my creativity was highly valued by those around me. One memory that has always stuck with me happened in second grade, when my teacher gave us a traditional writing assignment and I instead turned in an entire storybook. I hadn't followed the assignment structure, but my classmates became so intrigued by what I'd made that my teacher ended up changing the assignment for everyone into a storybook project. That experience taught me something I've carried with me ever since: there's value in forging your own path, even when it isn't the path you were originally given.

Pressing "Start" on Game Development

From middle school through high school, my creative passion evolved from comic books to animation, but something in my work felt like it was missing... I wanted my experiences to be interactive. The answer to this problem was unexpectedly an activity I had spent much of my childhood doing, but did not know it was a form of creative media until starting at community college: VIDEO GAMES! Video games were ultimately the form of creative media that best matched the experience I wanted users to have with my projects: They tell deep narratives, displayed breathtaking digital visuals, and engaged audiences through their content and interactive gameplay.

During my time at Raritan Valley Community College (RVCC), I participated in a life-changing opportunity that introduced me to developing games using the Unity game engine, which was a Capstone Research Project my sophomore year. Mentored by RVCC's game design professor, Professor Bill Crosbie, I spent 10 months developing my first Unity game, Greybeard's Galleon. The project taught players about binary search trees and evaluated the effectiveness of the game's content delivery against a traditional Data Structures textbook. The game featured a simple player controller, 3D objects modeled using ProBuilder, physics/collision systems, and UI dialogue panels, all tools I still use in my games today! By the end of those 10 months, I knew I hadn't just completed my first game—I had pressed "Start" on a journey I wanted to keep pursuing.

Two Minds, One Body

I'm a huge stan of Eminem, and what I admire most about him—outside of his ability to spit bars at record speed—is his inspiring life story. One part of his rise that has always stood out to me is the creation of his "Slim Shady" alter ego, which gave him a creative outlet for the cartoonish, outlandish side of himself that he might not have expressed otherwise.

My own alter ego was born during community college, when my peers gave me the nickname "Big Steppa." The name came from my ability to lock in on academic tasks for hours at a time—like finishing a 22-page research paper in one night—as well as my willingness to help classmates prepare for exams.

Over time, Big Steppa evolved from a nickname I happily embraced into a persona that allowed my normally introverted self to be bolder, take risks, and create more unfiltered projects. The Big Steppa unlocked the class clown I had previously kept bottled up when creating interactive projects out of concern for how audiences would receive them. That shift began influencing the games I created just as I was preparing to begin my Bachelor's journey at Rutgers University.

Infinite Learning

There is always something new to learn in the ever-evolving game industry, and when I transferred to Rutgers in Fall 2024, I hit the ground running and never looked back. Embracing my Big Steppa alter ego sparked a rush of gameplay and story ideas that I felt compelled to share with the gaming community. During my first semester, I began developing my first independent game, Dine & Dash Dungeon, which featured a twisted plot where the player gets caught attempting to dine and dash and decides to pilfer the chef's funds to pay the bill—or escape to a casino with the money in a bonus challenge!

Dine & Dash Dungeon was only the beginning. Across lectures, library trips, and club meetings, much of my time at Rutgers was spent inside Unity—and eventually Unreal Engine—experimenting with unfamiliar systems and finding excuses to incorporate them into new projects. Each game became an opportunity to challenge myself with something I hadn't built before, whether that meant developing increasingly complex gameplay systems, building larger 3D environments, experimenting with game AI, or eventually stepping into VR development.

That mindset didn't stop when I graduated. Working professionally in Games and XR for Major League Baseball (MLB) while continuing to develop independent projects has only reinforced how much there still is to learn. I've been able to experience game development from a new perspective by testing projects built by professional teams, while continuing to experiment with my own ideas outside of work.

The tools have changed quite a bit since that stack of paper and 64-pack of crayons, but the motivation behind them hasn't: I'm still forging my own path, learning something new with every project, and finding new ways to bring my endless imagination to life.