Tyler Glaiel (born 1990), also known by the moniker Glaiel Games, is an American video game designer and programmer known for games such as Aether (2008), Closure (2012), Number (2013), Bombernauts (2017), The End Is Nigh (2017) and Mewgenics (2026).
Life and career Glaiel is a native of Westfield, Massachusetts. He developed his first game, a simple thing called Pigeon Pooper using Adobe Flash in 2002, before his twelfth birthday. By high school, Glaiel was already one of the most successful game developers on Newgrounds, reportedly earning thousands of dollars from his games alone, leading Jonathan Holmes of Destructoid to call him "the Doogie Howser of videogames". He became a frequent collaborator of Edmund McMillen and went on to develop several titles together. In 2008, he earned the rank of Eagle Scout, the highest achievement in Scouts BSA. His game, Closure, won the Gameplay Innovation award at Indiecade 2009 and the Independent Games Festival award for Excellence in Audio in 2010, in addition to being nominated in the Innovation and Technical Excellence categories. The following year, he was invited to participate in the IGF's jury for the festival's innovation award, Nuovo.
Glaiel was included in the Forbes 30 Under 30 games industry section in 2016. Utilizing and building up a proprietary game engine of his own creation that allowed for SVG assets created in Adobe Flash to be imported expediently, Glaiel collaborated with McMillen for several months on The End Is Nigh, before it was released in 2017. In 2018, McMillen announced that he had acquired the rights to his previous project, Mewgenics and that he and Glaiel had begun developing it.
As of 2020, he was living in California. In 2020, at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic when face masks were becoming mandated by law in many parts of the world, Glaiel received a great deal of attention for a voice-activated LED face mask he made on a lark. The positive press led Glaiel to take the mask to Kickstarter, where he raised over US$70,000 to mass-produce it under the name JabberMask.
Games Year Title Platform Co-developer(s) Designer Programmer Notes 2005 Magnetism Flash Magnetism 2 Flash Krazy Kar Flash Audio supersoldier Flash Dan Paladin 2006 NightStrike Flash Aqua Slug Flash Paths Flash 2007 Paths 2 Flash 2008 Aether Flash Edmund McMillen 2009 Closure Flash Story, Music Tetraform Flash 2012 Closure PS3, Windows, Mac, Linux Port of the Flash game Offspring Fling Windows, Mac OS, Linux Tech Support Fracuum Flash The Basement Collection Windows, OS X, Linux Edmund McMillen Number Flash 2015 Crypt of the NecroDancer Windows, Mac, Linux, PS4, PS Vita, iOS, tvOS, Xbox One, Switch Tester Bombernauts Windows 2017 The End Is Nigh Windows, OS X, Linux, PS4, Switch Edmund McMillen 2018 Octogeddon Windows, Switch Tester Iconoclasts Windows, Mac, Linux, PS4, PS Vita, Switch, Xbox One 2019 The Legend of Bum-bo Windows, OS X, Android, iOS, Switch Additional Programming 2021 The Binding of Isaac: RepentanceWindows, Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S Tester 2026 Mewgenics Windows, Switch 2, PS5, Xbox Series X/S Edmund McMillen
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