Islander takes Bainbridge tech scene to new heights
Living on an island has its pros and cons. On the plus side is, well, almost everything. For starters, you never go very far without coming across a pretty view.
Getting off the island, on the other hand, can be a chore, often requiring a complex, time-consuming mix of ferries and every other conceivable mode of transportation. Imagine another option. What if you could attach giant propellers to the island, lift it up and take it wherever you need to go?
Islander Zach Mumbach has done more than consider this unlikely travel hack. He’s brought it to life and taken a few hundred thousand people along for the ride.
Mumbach is a video game designer and co-founder of The Wandering Band, an independent game studio. In Airborne Kingdom, the studio’s premiere release, players take their flying city with them as they travel the world seeking resources to restore it to its former grandeur. As convenient as it sounds, a mobile island in the sky carries its own unique challenges. For one, the citizens tend to get grumpy if the city tilts and they fall off.
Mumbach grew up playing video games. Unlike most kids, though, he also enjoyed tinkering with them, “modding” files to add his own art to the games.
A few weeks after graduating high school in Silicon Valley, Mumbach drove over to Electronic Arts, one of the world’s largest video game companies. “I just walked in the front door and said, ‘Hey, I want a job.
Amazingly, the direct approach worked. As it happened, a new batch of game testers was starting that day. Despite not having gone through the application or training process, Mumbach blended in with the crowd and, by the end of the day, was an EA employee.
For the next 17 years, Mumbach rose through the ranks to become manager of his own design team. Living his dream, however, came with a cost. “A lot of the video game thing is crunch, crunch, crunch,” he said. Seven-day weeks and 12-hour workdays were the norm, often extending to strings of 16-hour days as release dates bore down.
The relentless schedule, while viable for a single 20-something, took a toll as Mumbach entered his 30s and became a father. Then came the simultaneous birth of his second son and closure of his design studio within EA.
When EA shut down my studio, they gave me six months to do nothing. I was home and I realized how much I had missed with my first kid,” he recalled. “I had to get out of the video game industry, not because I didn't love it, but because I needed to be with my family.
A timely job offer came from a Seattle-based architecture and construction firm looking to bring in fresh Silicon Valley energy. While investigating housing options, Mumbach hopped on the Bainbridge ferry, and that was that. “I had to tell my wife we're gonna live on this island,” he said. “Then we all came over. It was like, this is the place we want to be.”
Mumbach happily settled into domestic life, but something was missing. One day, he received a software file from some friends who had left EA to form their own studio. It was a simple prototype for a flying city.
They asked me to play it and give them advice,” he said. “It immediately made me sad. This is what I should be doing. I'm not a construction guy. The job was interesting, but I had my dream job already.
The Wandering Band was born from a desire to create unique games within a sustainable lifestyle. The name refers to the disparate locations of the studio’s full-time members, currently consisting of Mumbach, programmer Fred Gareau, who splits time between Montreal and Peru, and 3D artist Amanda Cheng in England. Other specialists (including Mumbach’s wife, Lisa, a graphic designer) are contracted as needed.
The studio released Airborne Kingdom in 2020 to glowing reviews and a prestigious BAFTA nomination for best debut game.
The brisk sales that followed took the team by surprise. “None of us have business backgrounds,” Mumbach said. “To be honest, even though it's worked, and we sold hundreds of thousands, I don't know how.”
Airborne Empire, a follow-up on an even grander scale, is currently in early release and will officially debut in 2026. While optimistic, Mumbach has no ambition to reach EA level sales.
We're not under any pressure to get bigger,” he said. “Our goal has always been to make games we want to make, not go for the big, super hit. I just want to make this game because I think it's cool.
