Founder's Story
My name is Mikal Krall, and I’m the founder of Sapient Ape Games, and creator and designer of Plates: The Road Trip Game, Speedcicleta, The Kintaro Event, The Trials of D’Anu Bantúah, and Caging the Kaiju. I’ve wanted to make games for over two-thirds of my life, starting with some early attempts at board games in my pre-teens, leading into mods of computer games in my teen years.
I always assumed I’d end up making computer games, but I never got to the point of learning to code well enough to do so. Several years ago I realized I could funnel my ideas into my first, original interest in board games, but after making some initial plans for The Kintaro Event, I got sidetracked with life. That is, until Life hit me upside the head.
In August of 2022 I was given a preliminary diagnosis of ALS, also known as Motor Neuron Disease or Lou Gehrig’s Disease, which was confirmed as “bulbar onset ALS” soon after. I realized by September, after first languishing in anger and terror and despair, that I’d have to move fast on my goals if I was ever to achieve them. So I continued working on The Kintaro Event. This went on for about a year until I hit a wall with it. While I had made huge strides in the visual design, lore, and more, I realized the gameplay wasn’t heading where I wanted it to. So I pivoted toward one of my other passions — cycling.
I got started late on cycling, only getting on a bike when I was 10, and not even getting my own bicycle until 13, but I took to it like I was always meant to cycle. I never made it to the point of racing, though I seriously considered it for awhile, but riding was exciting and freeing and very important to me. Unfortunately, now I can’t ride, because my balance and strength are quickly waning. So I funneled that love into my second game, and my first to actually complete: Speedcicleta.
Speedcicleta is not meant to mimic pro racing (there are games for that, if that’s what you want), but is instead meant to be silly, casually competitive, and most importantly fun — channeling the things I most enjoyed from cycling. I was that cyclist that would listen to music on headphones while riding, occasionally swaying his bicycle back and forth to the beat, because it was always enough to just be on a bike having a great time.
We’re currently working toward launching Speedcicleta on Kickstarter, but we need more interest in order to be successful. You can learn more about Speedcicleta here and, if interested, enter your info to be informed when we’re ready to launch. If you pay $1, you’ll also be enrolled as a VIP and will be rewarded with 2 exclusive bonus tiles, lower launch day price, and access to the Speedcicleta VIPs group where you can engage with us directly and get exclusive VIP-only updates.
If we can make Speedcicleta a massive, breakaway success, we’ll funnel the profits into making our subsequent games more visually engaging. The Trials of D’Anu Bantúah and The Kintaro Event especially will benefit greatly from a lot of commissioned artwork, and this will help tremendously with that. We also have 4 other games in the works, and I’d love to get those out there before its too late.
Thanks so much for reading, and for your support!
Mikal Krall
Founder of Sapient Ape Games