Steve Hales is an American game programmer who became famous in the 1980s for the games Fort Apocalypse and Mindwheel . These games were programmed for the home computers Commodore 64 and Atari 800 . In 1984 Hales and Cathryn Mataga (then still William Mataga) developed the BTZ ("Better Than Zork ") engine , with the help of which the text adventures Mindwheel , Essex , Brimstone and Breakers were developed. In 1991 he started the company Igor's Software Laboratories, which deals with programming sounds.