Over the past two decades, I’ve developed games professionally. Before that, I contributed to modding projects and open source games. I’ve been fortunate to build a career doing what I love—working on excellent projects alongside brilliant people.

Still, I’ve never released a game of my own. I’ve built many prototypes over the years and learned a lot from each one, but I often took on more than I could realistically achieve as a solo developer. Over the past four years, I’ve been experimenting with smaller-scale designs, looking for an idea that both excited me and felt achievable.

Last year, I found that idea in Persevere. For a while, I’d been thinking about two concepts separately: a tower defense game with persistent progression (beyond simply unlocking towers), and a survival management game (like Banished or Frostpunk) where you travel across a land, rather than building in one place. Last autumn (2024), those ideas suddenly clicked together, and I’ve been developing the game ever since.

It began with a codename, Perseverance, a personal reminder of the mindset I’d need to see it through. But over time, the name became more than that. It started to shape the tone of the game itself: a story about a crew who, like me, must persevere to reach their destination.

- Mark Aherne

My day job is as Technical Director at NoesisGUI. We are the industry leader in UI middleware, providing best in class UI technology and production tools (Noesis Studio recently went into public beta, if you’re interested in UI check it out).

If you’d like to get in touch, you can contact me using the form below, or connect on LinkedIn.