Founders
Luke Richards - Creative Director
Luke is a game designer, narrative designer, writer, educator, and pixel artist with experience across commercial games, original IP, consultancy, corporate training, and games education.
Beginning his career as an author, Luke moved into games through narrative design before progressing into broader game design and design leadership. His work has covered RPGs, action games, comedy, horror, educational projects, and gamification for organisations including NHS England.
Alongside leading Black Cat’s creative work, Luke has delivered professional training, run game development bootcamps, and lectured at universities and industry events internationally. His work focuses on building coherent games in which design, narrative, production, and artistic intent support one another.
Link Richards - CEO & Mascot
A professional mascot with 9+ years' experience. Aside from inspiring teams, his favourite things are playing fetch, telling Luke what he sees out the window, extracting chicken bones from the garbage and hiding them under the sofa. He oversees all managerial decisions.
Team
Rob Beasley - Head of Outreach and Partnerships
Rob leads outreach and partnerships for Black Cat Entertainment, helping connect the studio with developers, educators, institutions, industry communities, and potential collaborators.
His role focuses on building relationships, identifying opportunities, and supporting communication around Black Cat’s games, education, and consultancy work. He also helps ensure that promising conversations are followed through and that the studio remains connected to the wider games industry.
Ruth Akien - Narrative Designer & Consultant
Ruth is an experienced narrative designer and consultant with an MFA in Creative Writing. She has worked with Black Cat on external consultancy projects, including interactive training for NHS England, and previously contributed narrative design at Utopian Game Labs.
Working alongside Black Cat’s wider creative team, Ruth brings particular strengths in plot, character, dialogue, and story development. She is also a trusted creative sounding board, helping to test, refine, and strengthen narrative ideas as projects develop.
Key Collaborator
David Mowbray -
Advisor and Collaborator
David Mowbray has provided his advice and collaboration on all projects, and as mentor, friend and key collaborator is always available to help or even take over when necessary. His involvement elevates our studio from creative talent to developers with an experience level and knowledge pool second to none.
David is a games industry veteran with more than four decades of experience and over 130 shipped titles. His career spans programming, game design, production, art, and technical leadership across an extraordinary range of commercial projects.
As a mentor and key collaborator, David brings deep practical and creative judgement to Black Cat’s games, education, and consultancy work. His insight helps shape projects from their earliest foundations through to production, ensuring that creative ambition is supported by sound design, disciplined scope, and a realistic understanding of how games are built.
David’s involvement gives Black Cat a level of technical and production experience that would normally sit within a much more established, larger studio.