Jay Ma

Jay Ma, formerly credited as Justin Ma, is a game designer and artist who co-founded the two-person studio Subset Games with programmer Matthew Davis. Together they made FTL: Faster Than Light (2012) and Into the Breach (2018), two of the most influential small-team strategy roguelikes of the past decade. Ma handles art and co-design; she is based in Kyoto, Japan.

Ma and Davis met as employees of 2K Games' studio in Shanghai, where they became friends over board games. Ma grew tired of working in a large studio, and after the 2011 Game Developers Conference the pair saved enough money to live for about a year and started a game they expected to take three months. Early builds used deliberately primitive art so they could focus on systems, and positive reactions at indie competitions such as IGF China convinced them to keep going.

To finish FTL they ran a Kickstarter in early 2012 asking for $10,000 and raised more than $200,000, making it one of the breakout crowdfunding successes of that year. FTL, a game about keeping a single starship and its crew alive across procedurally generated sectors, launched in September 2012. It won Excellence in Design and the Audience Award at the Independent Games Festival and Best Debut at the 2013 Game Developers Choice Awards. The free Advanced Edition update and an iPad version followed in 2014.

FTL's sales let Subset self-fund its next game. Into the Breach, a compact turn-based tactics game where every enemy move is telegraphed, launched in February 2018 with writing by Chris Avellone and music by Ben Prunty; a free Advanced Edition and Netflix mobile release followed in 2022. In 2025 Ma released Fulcrum Defender, a crank-controlled arcade game for Playdate's Season Two, made while she was dealing with long Covid.

Subset Games remains tiny and independent and only announces games once they are certain to ship. Its approach of short development cycles, small scope and two founders doing nearly everything is a reference point for indie strategy developers.