Zico Bakker

Product Lead · Producer · Founder

Product lead and producer with 10+ years in games and apps. I run my own company's portfolio of 8 live mobile games and apps end to end: roadmap, monetization, user acquisition and the numbers behind what ships next. Before that I co-founded Duckland Games and produced investor-backed titles ($6.4M and ~$7M rounds) with teams of up to 40 people, much of it remote. Around 500,000 downloads across my games and apps.

zico@zicobakker.com +31 6 41892076 LinkedIn zibaentertainment.com Gouda, NL · CET Employee, contract or freelance

Experience

Founder & Product Lead — ZiBa Entertainment B.V.2026 — Present · Gouda

Self-published mobile games & apps (iOS, Android) and PC/Steam · self-publishing as ZiBa Games since 2016

Own the full lifecycle of 8 live titles (incl. Deadlight, La Famiglia, Klack Sort, Word Waves, MedMate, Streaks): vision, roadmap, launch, updates and support.
Launched La Famiglia (Oct 2026), a painted turn-based mafia saga: ads + premium model, Remote Config balancing, EN and ES/LatAm campaigns.
Design the monetization mix per title: rewarded and interstitial ads, one-time IAP, subscriptions with free trials; ad-free where the audience calls for it.
Run paid UA on Google Ads (app installs and a Steam wishlist campaign) with budgets, test windows and kill rules set in advance, optimising on in-app events, not raw installs.
Balanced Deadlight with a headless simulation that plays thousands of runs, tuning toward a target 30–35% success rate before shipping.
Bringing Deadlight to Steam: PC edition with controller support and achievements, Early Access planned Q4 2026.
Build the products myself in Flutter with CI/CD, so I know the engineering trade-offs first-hand; comfortable pulling my own data with SQL.

Co-founder & Producer — Duckland Games B.V.2023 — 2026 · Breda

Forgotten Playland: Party Edition, a live-service 4-player party game on Steam

Owned production, planning and the multi-year live-service roadmap across design, engineering and art.
Stakeholder and investor communication around a ~$7M raise.
Managed external partners and vendors, incl. the 11-language localization for the Steam release.

Game Producer — Studio Red2021 — 2023 · Remote / NL

Ascenders, a sci-fantasy action-RPG in Unreal Engine 5

Helped scale the studio from 5 to 40 developers: pipelines, policy, HR and tooling, largely remote.
Sole producer on Ascenders: Simulation: 15-person team, 6-month build, ran Scrum.
Produced the funding trailer with a strike team of 5; the project closed a US$6.4M round.

Tech & UI Designer — Kari: Vanaheim2019 — 2020

Inventory, crafting and hazard systems plus UI flows for a UE4 puzzle-adventure shipped on Steam after 32 weeks, 88% positive.

Web Developer — Tuincentrum Holland2014 — 2017

Production websites and a custom configurator (JS, PHP, SQL).

Studio Titles

Forgotten Playland: Party Edition2023 → 2026 · Steam

Co-founder & Producer — Duckland Games B.V.

A 4-player social party game where an attic becomes a chaotic Playland of minigames. It launched on the Epic Games Store and is now a paid game on Steam; most of my ~500,000 total downloads come from it.

Owned production, planning and the multi-year live-service roadmap.
Investor and stakeholder communication around a ~$7M raise.
Kept a small core team and brought in outsource partners to hit fast deadlines without overspending.

Live-serviceSteamProductionOutsourcingLocalization ×11

forgottenplayland.com Steam Funding

Ascenders2021–23 · UE5

Game Producer — Studio Red

A large-scale sci-fantasy action-RPG. I joined early and helped grow the studio while producing key milestones.

Helped scale Studio Red from 5 to 40 developers.
Sole producer on Ascenders: Simulation (15-person, 6-month build).
Produced the funding trailer; project closed a US$6.4M round.

Unreal Engine 5RPGTeam of 15

ascenders.gg $6.4M round

Kari: Vanaheim2019–20 · UE4

Tech & UI Designer

A mythic puzzle-adventure shipped on Steam after a 32-week production, rated 88% positive.

Concept design, wireframes and prototypes for inventory, crafting and hazard systems.
Built interface flows around clarity, connecting the systems that carried the experience.

Unreal Engine 4UI/UXSystems

Steam

ZiBa Entertainment — 8 live games & apps

Mobile games & apps, built and run end to endiOS · Android · Steam

Founder & Product Lead — roadmap · monetization · UA · ASO · Flutter · CI/CD

Every title goes from first prototype to store listing, localized release notes, ad/IAP/subscription monetization and paid acquisition. Deadlight has around 500 daily active players.

Deadlight: A Zombie Chronicle

Zombie survival strategy · PC edition coming to Steam

App Store · Google Play · Steam

La Famiglia

Turn-based 1950s mafia saga · launched Oct 2026

Details

Klack Sort & Klack: Neon Bounce

Colour-sort puzzle & neon arcade

Details

Word Waves

Language learning in 10 languages

Details