Braid, Carto, and ETHEREAL developers establish new studio Furniture & Mattress

David Hellman, Nick Suttner, and Nicolas Recabarren have announced the establishment of Furniture & Mattress, a fully remote game studio working on their unannounced debut game with support from the newly announced Astra Fund.

Hellman was the artist on Braid; Suttner previously worked at Sony Interactive Entertainment and Sunhead Games, where he was the lead writer on Carto; Nicolas Recabarren was one of the two developers behind ETHEREAL.

“When you’re working on a puzzle, sometimes you need to make a big mess before putting things back together,” said co-founder Hellman in a press release. “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.”

The studio’s first project will feature art and animation created entirely by Hellman, while narrative, production, and business development will be handled by Suttner, and game design and programming by Recabarren. Furnitur e& Mattress will also partner with IGF-nominated composer Tomas Batisa to compose an original soundtrack and audio for the game.

“I love puzzle games and playing with surprising new mechanics, but they rarely keep me hooked until the end,” co-founder Recabarren said. “I wanted to create a cohesive world in which you’re not just solving puzzles because it’s interesting, but because you care about the needs of other characters, and want to help. So I reached out to Nick to help me build it.”

Co-founder Suttner added, “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. 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.”

Further details about Furniture & Mattress’ debut game were not announced.