TechGamesPlus

Ethan Dahlberg (known online as TechGamesPlus) is an Australian game developer, 3D modeller and programmer. He has created the games Exploration Playground, Tag! Now Hide!, Floaty Square, The Awakening and its Ren'Py remake and spin-offs, The Athiccening and The Remembrance.
==Biography==
===Beginning in PowerPoint===
During sometime in 2019, Ethan decided to start video-game development in Microsoft PowerPoint with The Script, a FNaF fan-game. The Script was soon cancelled and was later the main inspiration for his next game, The Awakening.
On April 12, 2023, Ethan released a video onto YouTube featuring high quality footage of The Script."Revisiting my old PowerPoint Games (Part 1)" – @TechGamesPlus on YouTube, April 12, 2023 This will become a series of videos, showcasing more games that had not been seen by anyone other than himself or some of his IRL friends.
===Creation of the Unofficial OSFirstTimer Server===
In the coming months, Ethan had discovered the YouTuber OSFirstTimer and started enjoying their content. On June 4, 2020, he created a Discord fan-server for OSFirstTimer named the Unofficial OSFirstTimer Server, but sadly they were unable to join. However, Ethan didn't give up here. On July 15, the day of OSFirstTimer's first premiere,Diana Games Through Time #7 - King's Quest (1984) – @OsFirstTimer on YouTube, July 16, 2020 he advertised the server in its live chat and also the video's comments section. To quite his surprise, it had worked, and soon enough Connor, Mr. Long and later Clpz, Overgreen and Mark (of what they would later become his friends) joined the server from his advertisements, and in Mark's case, his top.gg advertisement.
Fast forward to August 12, Ethan had the idea to develop a game for OSFirstTimer when they reach 100K YouTube subscribers. This game would be known as Across the Galaxy, but unfortunately due to certain conditions the game was cancelled very shortly after its first creation. Across the Galaxy was not completely scrapped however, as 1.5 years later on February 5, 2022, Ethan announced he has thought of re-envisioning it as a Clickteam Fusion 2.5 game."Update to The Script Entertainment Timeline" – @TechGamesPlus on Game Jolt, February 5, 2022 (10:00:46 UTC) Looking for other ideas of said gift, he came back to The Script, remembering what was left behind. And on August 25, 2020, The Awakening was born. The Awakening spin-offs The Athiccening and The Remembrance were created shortly after. 
On September 14, the server was rebranded to The CODEC.
===Leaving PowerPoint for the Unity Engine===
Frustrated at the limitations of PowerPoint, Ethan sought for a real game engine and found himself choosing between Unity and Unreal Engine. After a lengthy discussion, he finally chose Unity after his friends insisted so.
Now that he abandoned PowerPoint, he needed to learn a completely new engine, and after following a few Brackeys tutorials, he developed his first Unity game Exploration Playground as a test. With the new found knowledge, he created his first proper game Tag! Now Hide!, which premise was to hide-and-seek against killer BEANS. However, Tag! Now Hide! was eventually integrated into Exploration Playground as it slowly became more and more obvious that Exploration Playground was much more than just a simple test, rather a full-game in itself.
===Speedrunning Event===
On May 8, 2021, Ethan decided to host a speedrunning competition for The CODEC from May 10 to June 10. During that month Mr. Long, Clpz and Ethan himself had participated.
===The Awakening on YouTube===
On approximately June 24, 2021, Ethan commented on OSFirstTimer's Mum Destroys Windows 11 video asking for their email. It was later given to him and Ethan sent an email to OSFirstTimer on September 5. He exchanged emails with them over the coming months, and on November 11, OSFirstTimer released their Microsoft Office 2021 video, featuring Ethan's game The Awakening towards the end. 
===Learning the Ren'Py Visual Novel Engine===
On August 10, 2021, Ethan announced he was going to transfer C:R development from the Unity Engine to the Ren'Py Engine. Due to this, he had to completely learn another game engine.
===Another Speedrunning Event===
On May 10, 2022, Ethan decided to host a speedrunning competition for the UnderscoreSquad from May 10 to June 10. During that month no one had participated causing Speedrunning Month to never be held again.
===Postponement of Games===
On July 19, 2023, Ethan announced that all of his future games, including Codename: Reawakened, would be postponed until further notice due to him being "too stressed from having to make everything (besides music) on my own", and fears that the games will not be as successful as he wants."I'm sad to announce that Codename: Reawakened, and all the rest of the games, will be postponed until further notice." – @TechGamesPlus07 on Twitter / X, July 19, 2023 (23:03 UTC)
==Lists==
==Social media==
*Bluesky
*Discord
*Game Jolt
*Geometry Dash
*GitHub
*Itch.io
*Mastodon
*NameMC
*Newgrounds
*Reddit
*ROBLOX
*Spotify
*Steam
*Twitch
*Twitter / X
*Xbox
*YouTube
==References==