The first door
Asterdal exists on paper. Here is what that took, what the name means, and what comes next.
Asterdal became a company this week. A small one: one person, a Wyoming LLC, a domain, and a lot of corridors still unlit.
Why a studio before a game
Most people would ship something first and make it official later. I did it the other way around, on purpose. I wanted the house to exist before the first room: a name that would hold more than one project, a legal home that works from anywhere, and a brand I wouldn’t want to redo in a year.
So, in this order: the name, the symbol, the company, and this site.
The name
Asterdal is “the valley of Asterion”. If you know the story, you know the house with countless doors, and none of them ever closed. If you don’t, you don’t need to: the point is in the motto on the front page. Every labyrinth begins with an open door.
Games and apps with depth should still be easy to walk into. That is the whole brief.
The symbol
A square wall, open at the bottom, with a point of light at the center. It is the simplest labyrinth you can draw. The opening is the door; the light is where you are going.
What this site is
Not a brochure. The labyrinth on the front page is playable, there is a new one every day, and the Lab has a few toys we made along the way. If the studio makes games, the site should feel like one.
What’s next
Two doors are in development: a game and an app. There is no date yet, and I won’t invent one. When the first door is ready to open, the people who left their email will hear it first, once.
Thanks for walking in.