About
We make games with something unusual at the centre.
Anduin Games is an independent game studio. Every project is built around one mechanic that is not standard issue. In one, golf is the combat system. In another, the world rewrites itself while you are standing in it. In a third, every room you escape becomes a ring you carry into the next. We would rather make a few things with a point of view than many things without one.
What we care about
- 01
Story
Most of what we make is about someone, and the systems are there to make you care what happens to them. When a game has no cast, the idea at its centre carries the same weight instead.
- 02
Invention
One idea per game that nobody else is building. Golf as the combat system. A world that rewrites itself while you are standing in it. A room that becomes part of you once you have escaped it.
- 03
Place
The best worlds feel like somewhere rather than a menu. We build the place first, then the game that happens inside it.
How we work
No house genre. Three of the four projects so far are role-playing games, because that is the shape those particular stories wanted, not a rule we set. The fourth is a minimalist action-puzzle game, which is what that idea turned out to need. What we do repeat is the approach: a story worth following, one idea nobody else is building, and a world that looks like nothing we have made before.
One strange idea per game. Each project needs something it does that nothing else does, and that idea has to be load-bearing rather than decorative. If the unusual part could be removed and the game would not notice, it was never the idea.
Each game gets its own world. The studio has no house style. A golf RPG should look like a summer afternoon at the club; a story about a kid between two worlds should look like the night it happens in. Anduin Games is the container, not the flavour.
Systems should be honest. If a number is on screen, it should be a real number the game actually uses. If a piece of gear looks better, it should be better for a reason a player can understand.
Status means status. We say “in development” once a project is in production and moving, and “early concept” when it is still an idea with art. We do not publish dates we cannot keep.
Press, publishing, or something else?
There is a door for each of those on the contact page, and a small press page with the studio’s assets.