In his role as Senior Designer and World Builder on Never Alone 2, Gaurav Mathur developed a research-based understanding of Iñupiat culture and Northern Alaska's Sacred Landscape with a focus on art and open world level design considerations.
As Creative Director for External Studios at Penumbra, Gaurav synthesized clinical input with art and design direction for external studio partners building Virtual Reality therapies. He was the founding Art Director for the internal REAL System studio team and guided development of Happy Valley, Penumbra's stroke rehabilitation therapy game and first released title.
In a career spanning over twenty-five years, Gaurav has worked on titles including the critically acclaimed Grim Fandango and Psychonauts, the bestseller Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, and the innovative Skylanders console games. He launched gamedevmap in 2005 -- a curated living map and catalog of game development around the world.
Gaurav has been a judge and a mentor with the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) for over a decade and served on the Excellence in Visual Art Jury for the Independent Games Festival in 2022.