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^ Lazarides, Tasos (November 9, 2017).

'Sage Solitaire and SpellTower dev is making a game called Really Bad Chess'. 'Solitaire gets a much-needed makeover in this new mobile game'. 'Prepare for Wisdom or Weirdness with Zach Gage's #Fortune, Out This Week'. 'Cloned at Birth: The Story of Ridiculous Fishing'. ' 'Skiing Yeti Mountain' Preview - The Alternate Universe Version of 'Dudeski' '. 'Zach Gage Tackles A Genre He Hates With SpellTower Exclusive'.

^ Alexander, Leigh (November 17, 2011).

'The Weblog Interview: Zach Gage Caught in a Lose/Lose Situation'. 'Veteran game developers reveal their childhood creations'. 'Game Designer Stands at Rowdy Intersection of Entertainment and Art'.

^ a b c d e f g Kohler, Chris (December 17, 2012).

'GDC's game design challenge gets emotional over 30-year games'.

He participated in the 2016 Game Developers Conference game design challenge panel and his work was previously featured in the NYU Game Center's No Quarter exhibition. Gage also created a card game, Guts of Glory, which he crowdfunded via Kickstarter. As the systems designer, Gage worked to make the game's elements of chance exciting. Ī collaboration with Choice Provisions (of the Bit.Trip series) manifested as the 2016 strategy game Tharsis. Gage also assisted in the iOS port of Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy. Gage also created digital games based on playing card and board games: Sage Solitaire (2015), Really Bad Chess (2016), and Flipflop Solitaire (2017). The app was based on a similar physical machine he had built. A user can receive three daily fortunes based on the time of day, and a countdown timer displays when the user can return. In Gage's #Fortune, a 2015 smartphone app, the user presses a button on a minimal interface to receive a fortune cookie-style fortune based on the Twitter messages of strangers. During the peak of development, the game's artist moved in with Gage to work 14-hour days. Gage later worked as the iOS developer for Vlambeer's 2013 Ridiculous Fishing, in which players use motion and touch controls to catch fish and subsequently shoot them out of the sky for cash. Gage was inspired by another game that combined Tetris and Boggle, and with that developer's permission, created a version that released prior to the game that inspired it. His next app, the word game SpellTower, was commercially successful and led to multiple venture capital offers that Gage declined in favor of staying independent. He created a visual music sequencer (SynthPond) and a horizontal Tetris-style game ( Unify). Outside of his art work, Gage began programming for Apple's App Store upon its 2008 opening for submissions. Security company Symantec classified the game as malware. The conceptual project intended to question human propensity to follow directions and the real-life consequences of in-game decisions, following from works including Eddo Stern's Tekken Torture Tournament. In its most infamous piece, Lose/Lose, the player shot on-screen aliens, each of which corresponded to a file on the player's hard drive. Back in New York, he completed a Master of Fine Arts degree at the Parsons School of Design, with a thesis show of multiple works on the relationship between data and the Internet. He was later hired to program an installation piece similar to his thesis for an exhibition at the Venice Biennale, which encouraged him to attempt new projects headlong. Gage returned to New York City after college and worked with Eyebeam. His new media thesis project was an interactive installation involving viewer tracking and video projection.

He attended Skidmore College and upon finding its computer science program lackluster, graduated with a degree in art in 2007. He advanced to C++ and Java programming languages in high school, where he also developed an interest in photography. In his time with Cocoa, Gage collaborated with another teen developer, created a demo for the company that purchased Cocoa from Apple, and contributed to a book on the language.

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As a child, Gage created imaginary games with the drawing software on his family computer, adventure games in Apple's hyperlink-based HyperCard software, and video games in Apple's Cocoa visual programming language for children. He would retain this do it yourself mentality to learn new creative skills and escape later creative slumps.

His mother allowed few game purchases in their house, and coming from a family of artists, encouraged Gage to make his own games.

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