A return to the first question.

As a child, Hood was as interested in what made games work as he was in playing them, a curiosity that eventually led him to learn programming on his own.

Years later, after building a career in technology and experimenting with game development on the side, that curiosity had become practical: not simply how games were made, but what he could build with the knowledge and judgment he had acquired.

Hood’s professional work centered on financial and data infrastructure. Reliability in that environment depended on sound systems design, dependable tooling, careful iteration, and decisions made with future constraints in mind.

When a broader restructuring at the fund led to his team being disbanded, Hood chose not to move directly into another role and used the transition to begin building something of his own.

Rather Unique Creations became a way to apply the technical discipline of that career to original work, with the creative independence to pursue ideas on their own terms. His education at Wharton had reinforced an entrepreneurial instinct, but accumulated experience and an unexpected opening made it practical to act.

Insane Train grew from two long-standing interests: platform games and trains. The immediacy and replayability of the arcade games Hood grew up playing shaped its emphasis on movement, while trains provided a natural structure for momentum, terrain, and route choice.

That combination is meant to work across generations. Trains can be immediately engaging for younger players and remain compelling to adults, while terrain, momentum, elevation, and route choice offer more depth to anyone who wants it.