Braid, Carto, & Ethereal Devs Announce New Indie Studio, Furniture & Mattress

Today, David Hellman (Braid), Nick Suttner (Carto), and Nicolás Recabarren (Ethereal) announced they are opening up a brand new indie development studio, Furniture & Mattress. Thanks to the support of publisher Astra Fund, the team will be creating an unannounced title that explores their
shared love of adventure and exploration, clever puzzles, and weird humor.

Co-founders David Hellman and Nick Suttner discussed the new studio, as well as their ideologies regarding game development and their future a bit more in-depth below:

“When you’re working on a puzzle, sometimes you need to make a big mess before putting
things back together,” said Hellman. “You have to push through some chaos
before finding the right order. Drawing can be like that, and so can a lot of things in life, on a
personal scale and a big societal scale too. Those are some of the things we’re exploring in our
game mechanics and story.”

“We’ve all been making games in some capacity for a long time, so it was important to us to do
it in a healthy way – biting off something of the right scope, paying ourselves properly, and
sharing in the creative vision of the game,” said Suttner. “It was also critical to
find great partners to work with for the things we can’t do ourselves, like Astra Fund and
Popagenda. We want to give this game its best chance at success.”

From the very first chat we had with Astra, we felt pretty cosmically aligned with their mission
and values. Their support is allowing us to maintain our independence and
self-publish the game we want to make, and they’ve just been a total joy to work with.

According to the press release, Hellman is in charge of art and animation, Suttner is handling the script and production, and Recabarren will lead the game design and programming. Be sure to check back for more info on the game as it is announced.