Indie Dev Spotlight: Tarsier Studios and the Minds Behind Their Success

This week, I wanted to shine a spotlight on Tarsier Studios, the developers of the first two Little Nightmares games, and their newest title, Reanimal, which has become a viral sensation. Although they’ve created such iconic games, they are still considered an indie developer company, and I want to commemorate their achievements and what they’ve in the works in Sweden.

Tarsier Studios

Like I said, Tarsier Studios is a Swedish indie game company based in Malmö. It was founded in 2004, with a team of nine total developers. Andreas Johnsson and Björn Sunesson founded the company together. It was a slow start for the company, developing small indie games for the first decade and a half since its inception. After Tarsier Studios brought in Mattias Nygren as CEO, they attracted interest from Sony as a potential publisher in 2005; however, they ultimately did not sign a deal. It was only after Tarsier worked on the development of Rag Doll Kung Fu that they again gained interest from Sony, eventually signing an exclusive deal in 2010. 

The team grew from 9 developers to 30, working on bigger and better projects throughout the 2010s. Eventually, in 2016, the company landed a deal to develop a game named Hunger, which would later be named Little Nightmares. This would be their breakout hit game that would lead to a major deal in 2019, in which Goodbye Kansas Game Invest, an investment company, would buy the company for 99 million krona (Swedish currency). Currently, only 3 out of the 9 original developers still work at Tarsier Studios.

The Success of Little Nightmares

The success of Little Nightmares changed many things for the studio. Though Tarsier Studio underwent management changes, the rights to Little Nightmares still belong to their respective owners. As of today, both Little Nightmares 1 and 2 have sold a collective 20 million copies and have become cult classics within the horror genre. And though the third and latest installment of the series was picked up and developed by Supermassive Games, the series has Tarsier Studios to thank for its immense success.