Soma Games LLC is an indie video game developer located in Newberg, Oregon. We believe video games can be far more than time-wasters. Video games hold the potential to showcase beauty, reward adventure and excellence, and challenge thinking. Our goal is to passionately and dutifully craft the games that elevate humanity rather than waste it. To learn more, check out our website.
SAMMI RIFF
Well-seasoned with sass and spunk, Sammi infuses fun and joy into whatever she does. Her current title is “level designer,” but her roles have ranged from a research intern to a puzzle wizard since she started in 2017. With her expertise, she works with most departments at Soma at nearly any given time. Sammi’s natural curiosity makes her a great fit for her responsibilities designing levels, riddles, puzzles, game testing, or whatever else is on her docket. (And yes, her curious nature is also why she even knows that peanut butter and pineapple are a winning ice cream topping combo.) Learn more about Sammi in her Q&A below.
Question: What’s your favorite part of working for Soma?
The community here is something special: One part work, one part church, and all friends dear to me as family.
Question: What’s your favorite part of your job?
Creating a 3D world and getting to explore it. It reminds me of the enumerable hours I spent as a child playing Zoo Tycoon 2 in creative mode, making landscapes and aquariums for my digital pets.
Question: What do you like to do in your free time?
After work hours I like to play more video games in the name of “research,” conduct culinary experiments in the kitchen, sail the seas in search of the OnePiece, Dungeon Dive with my fellow Intrepid Adventurers, and occasionally draw.
Question: What’s been one of your biggest accomplishments?
The month I spent in Japan. It was my first-time solo in a foreign country, and I didn’t get too lost. I got to check a ton of things off my bucket list and did a lot of growing up; [it was] like my own little coming of age adventure.
Question: How do you want people to remember you?
I’ve always wanted to help break ground in a new genre. It’d be cool to be one of the names remembered as one of the original “Pioneers” of whatever it is. It doesn’t have to be my name exactly, but some piece of work I’ve created. Now if only I could find some unsettled territory…
Question: What causes do you care about?
I feel pretty strongly about normalizing entomophagy: the practice of eating insects. I love a good steak as much as your average velociraptor, but there is a whole culinary world of easily reared, healthy, low impact calories that are being sorely squandered by Western Cuisine. I would love to see a future where BeeLT’s can be found at your average diner and Tempura Fried Mealworms is a possible salad topping.
Question: What’s your personal motto? Or, what three words best describe you?
“I am third” – God first. Others second. I am third. I stole this from a church study group, but it really reflects how I desire to live my life.
