Pretty Cool Games has been co-founded by Human: Fall Flat veterans Sitara Shefta (CEO) and Will Dudley (CCO) with the aim of building a sustainable studio that’s fair to its employees and rewards them for their success.
Shefta was previously CEO and studio head of No Brakes Games Tenerife, having directed the development of Human: Fall Flat. She was recently elected to the TIGA Board of Directors and serves on the BAFTA Games Committee.
Dudley, meanwhile, was an original team member on Human: Fall Flat and has previously worked at Sony Interactive Entertainment, Lionhead Studios, Rare, and Marmalade Game Studio.
To launch the fully remote, UK-based studio, Pretty Cool Games secured undisclosed funding from Chinese developer Hypergryph, best known for the RPG Arknights: Endfield.
“There is a lot of difficulty in raising investment at the moment, but that doesn’t mean the demand for fresh new games has reduced”
“There is a lot of difficulty in raising investment at the moment, but that doesn’t mean the demand for fresh new games has reduced,” Shefta tells GamesIndustry.biz.
“From our very first conversation [with Hypergryph], we got on really well. They loved the game concept, supported our studio vision and long-term plan, and embraced our wacky ideas. The fact that they’re game developers who are now supporting other game devs made them stand out to us too, and we wanted to partner with someone who was just as enthusiastic about our ambitions as us.”
Shefta states that most of the studio’s funding is allocated to its debut title, which draws inspiration from Nintendo, Hazelight (maker of Split Fiction), the immersive experiences of Disney theme parks, and the physical comedy of films such as The Pink Panther.
“We want to create something memorable, timeless and so much fun that you remember it with delight years after you first played it,” Shefta emphasises.
“We are leaning into creativity as a pillar of our studio, and that applies to our players as well. We are developing a game that will allow players to be creative and express themselves through play. This partly comes from the freedom granted to players in a physics game, combined with our systems and level design allowing for all sorts of wild and unexpected scenarios.”
The investment is also enabling the studio to hire a small, focused team that Shefta aims to make sustainable over the long term. The studio is seeking additional investment and a publishing partner for its debut title.
Pretty Cool Games currently has a team of four full-time staff and plans to expand to ten. “We have four imminent hires in lead design, level design, environment art, and concept art. In future, we’ll also be bringing on QA and open contract positions for character art, audio, UI, and a composer.”
“We’re keeping the core team small, being ambitious but practical in terms of scope,” Shefta clarifies. “We are also trying to build a studio that is sustainable by being fair to our employees. We’ve recently seen a lot of layoffs across the industry that don’t align with the success of the games those same developers have made – we are trying to build something that rewards our team for success, for instance through share schemes, so if our games are successful we all benefit together.”
Shefta says Pretty Cool Games’ goal is to “take the best of AAA and combine that with a smaller focused team that can experiment, iterate fast, and make decisions quickly.”
“Indie development can be much faster and more efficient, embracing experimentation and then focusing on what feels good”
“Working in AAA taught me to be disciplined about quality and how important it is to consider what makes an IP successful,” she recalls. “These games often have such huge budgets which I’ve seen lead to wasteful decisions and also make recoup incredibly challenging – which can be unsustainable. Indie development can be much faster and more efficient, embracing experimentation and then focusing on what feels good, running with one or two key ideas then allows you to make something special.”
“Being part of a smaller team means that everyone has more of an influence on shaping the game and that’s more meaningful to us as creatives too.”
Ultimately, Shefta aims to build a studio “that puts our player’s experience and our employees wellbeing first.”
“There’s always going to be challenges no matter when you launch a new studio, but we’re going to rely on the significant experience and knowledge we’ve built over the years, and stay strong on our commitment to build games in the right way.”