Meet the Team

Jacob Knipper is what happens when a lifetime love of boardgames, a degree in Architecture, and a pandemic-fueled creative frenzy collide. A Magic: The Gathering nerd turned indie board game designer, Jake dove headfirst into the deep end of board game design in 2020 while juggling stay-at-home dad duties and an increasingly obsessive love affair with Root by Leder Games. What began as fan content – two factions, a deck, and five maps (because why stop at one?) – quickly evolved into a full-blown career pivot.

Now the founder of Red Tail Games, Jake is crafting a brand around clever mechanics, thoughtful design, and just the right amount of chaos. He’s currently developing Neon Nexus, a dice-drafting, roll-and-write, City builder, and Dungeons of Gul-Drun, a dungeon-crawling deckbuilder that may or may not include a sentient bottomless pit (at least, we’re pretty sure its sentient?) When he’s not prototyping or arguing with his own rulebook margins, Jake leads Design in Progress, a Discord and YouTube community where game makers gather to test wild ideas, share half-baked brilliance, and lovingly roast each other’s mechanics, celebrating each broken prototype along the way.

If you’re into cardboard, community, and chaos (or just want to meet the guy who made the largest Root map yet), come say “Hi!”  Jake probably brought dice,  and he’s definitely brought opinions.