Alain Xalabarde is an award-winning film director, an award-winning game designer and a published author. Alain was born in the Basque Country, raised in South Africa and made in New York.
Alain began creating his own board games in his early teenage years, consequently developing his first video game at the age of 16. Since then he has created numerous titles throughout his life, ranging through all sorts of platforms, from cards and board games, to mobile and PC games. He initially served as a narrative consultant in Berlin, and soon after hired in Austria as game designer for IGT, the world’s leading casino games developer, creating some of the brand’s beloved premier 3D and 4D titles. He would then relocate to Stockholm and become a proud member of the production team of Fatshark’s PC smash hit “Warhammer: Vermintide 2“. He is currently game designer for the mobile gaming company Genera Games. Among his other personal projects are “Actor Tycoon” and “13 Minutes Ago“.
His first experience in the movie industry was at the early age of 13, as an apprentice at Sasani Studios in Cape Town, South Africa. While still in high school, Alain interned for a local TV station in Bilbao. After directing 3 short films, he finally took his first film lesson at the Digital Film Academy in New York. It was in this city where he’d spend the following years working, among others, as director of photography. He would eventually return to London, where he would write the feature film script of ‘El Ultimo Roble’.
Alain has also participated as a gaming speaker at international conferences such as Casual Connect Europe (London), Taipei Game Developers Forum (Taiwan), Game Dev Days Graz (Austria) and Gamilearn (Spain).
Alain is a published author of two books. His first, the philosophical fiction novella “Human Gods“, and his second, a non-fiction title named “The Film Textbook“, dedicated to film teaching.
He has taught as a film teacher in various institutions, including the Digital Film Academy (NY), Queens World Film Festival (NY), and the American School of Bilbao (Spain).
He was also founder and director of the world’s leading Basque film platform “Cine Vasco“ and organized the first-ever Basque Film Awards.