Give players a toolbox.
We'd rather hand you tools, rules and feedback and see what you do with them than walk you through a checklist.
Go on, click something.
Independent game studio
Syscall Studios: Make systems
worth understanding.
We make games about figuring out how things work, and the moment it finally clicks.
What we believe
We don't want to impress you with how clever we are.
We want to build games that let you discover how clever you can be.
How it should feel
Confusion is where it starts.
A lot of our favorite moments in games follow roughly the same path. Not every mechanic has to go through every step, but we want learning to make you better at the game, not just bump up a number.
If you clicked around at the top of the page, you've already done the first three.
- 01
Confusion
Something you don't understand yet.
- 02
Curiosity
You poke at it.
- 03
Experimentation
You form a theory and test it.
- 04
Understanding
“Ohhh. That's why that happened.”
- 05
Competence
You stop reacting and start predicting.
- 06
Mastery
You bend the system on purpose.
- 07
Creativity
You do something we never planned for.
What we care about
What carries over from game to game.
We don't want to be the studio that only makes one kind of game. The genre and art style will change. The way we approach each game shouldn't, and it looks something like this.
Keep the actions simple.
Picking something up or flipping a switch shouldn't need a tutorial. The interesting part is what happens because you did it.
Make the rules readable.
Randomness and hidden information are fine. A game that seems to screw you over for no reason isn't. You should be able to work out why something happened.
Let knowledge be the upgrade.
Some of the best progress in a game happens in your head, like when you spot a bottleneck early or finally get how two systems affect each other.
Make places feel lived in.
Real places pile up repairs, scuffs, sticky notes and temporary fixes nobody got around to replacing. We want our worlds to have that kind of history.
Treat atmosphere as part of the game.
Lighting, sound, weather and clutter should change with what's happened, so you can look around and see what you did.
None of it matters if the game isn't fun.
A clever simulation that's a chore to play is a failed game. Everything else on this list is there to make the game more fun, not the other way around.
What we're working on
Our first game.
Right now we're prototyping the risky parts and making sure the core loop is actually fun before we build out the rest. We'll show it once there's something worth looking at.
In Development
Project 01
Our first game. It's in development, and we're keeping the details to ourselves until we have something worth showing.
- Genre
- xxxxxxxxxx
- Setting
- xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Platforms
- xxxxxxx
- Reveal
- When it's ready.
Dev log
What we built, what broke, what we learned.
Notes from making the game, including the parts that didn't work and the occasional 2 a.m. disaster.
Read the dev log →Project 01 Changed
After eight months of development, we're changing which game will become Syscall Studios' first release. On understanding scope, sunk cost, old projects, and choosing the right first game.
Placeholder Art Is Lying to You
Placeholder art is essential for prototyping. It's also great at making good mechanics feel terrible. What we're learning about game feel, polish, and fidelity.