Braid artist co-founds new game studio teasing a return to "clever puzzles and weird humor"

Braid artist David Hellman has co-founded a new studio, Furniture & Mattress, to work on another puzzle game.

As the studio announced today, Hellman is joined by writer Nick Suttner (Carto, Guacamelee! 2) and programmer Nicolàs Recabarren (Ethereal), with composer Tomás Batista working on an original soundtrack for the studio's debut game. This will be Hellman's first full-fat game since Braid and later Braid: Anniversary Edition, which is still regarded as one of the best and most influential games of its heyday, as well as one of the cleverest puzzle games around.

Furniture & Mattress is keeping its first game close to its chest for now, but the studio did mention the small, fully remote team's "shared love of adventure and exploration, clever puzzles, and weird humor." The brief teaser on the studio's website echoes these design themes, and also stresses that "we want everyone to be able to play it."

"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," Recabarren says, referencing his experience with small and experimental games. "So I reached out to Nick to help me build it."

"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," Suttner adds. A release from Furniture & Mattress is likewise quick to stress offering "a living wage."

This project has been in the works in some capacity since 2020, though Furniture & Mattress was only officially founded in 2021 with support from Astra Fund's gaming initiative. It's currently unclear when the studio's debut game will arrive, but given the talent behind it, we're already interested.

Here are 25 new indie games of 2022 to keep on your radar.

Austin has been a game journalist for 12 years, having freelanced for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree. He's been with GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've yet to realize his position is a cover for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a lot of news and the occasional feature, all while playing as many roguelikes as possible.