who robots are

Robots Make Games is a two person startup independent game developer based in Wellington, New Zealand. Chris is a technical artist, 3D modeller and programmer, responsible for just about all aspects of development. Karyn is a lawyer who spends her time looking after the business side of things - and doing the essential job of ten people to keep Chris’ head in the clouds.

Together we bring a lifelong passion for games and gaming, technical expertise, business experience and the drive and determination to bring ideas to life. We pride ourselves on our ability to find new ways to iterate fast for small teams like ours, so we can implement major changes in a short period of time - making sure that reality can keep pace with our ever-evolving vision.

We’re currently working on our first major game: a first person horror puzzle game set in an abandoned English manor called The Poacher. Keep scrolling down to find out what we’ve done, what we’re doing and our plans for the future…

Want to chat? Sure! Check out our socials in the header, head over to our new Discord, or email us for business enquiries: [email protected] or [email protected].

what robots make

robots make games

We're game focused in everything we do: art, programming, and story building for gameplay. We're product focused: none of the programs we use matters if the end product isn't up to scratch. We work hard to make sure we can be as platform agnostic as possible because we have a clear mission: making games people want to play. We've been working hard on ways to use existing tools in new and exciting ways to develop new and interesting gameplay systems to keep players on their toes.

robots make horror

Hey, we know we're a couple of adorable little cutie-pies. I mean, look at our logo. But there's a reason we've chosen to put our main focus on horror: we're a couple of horrific cutie-pies at heart, who grew up on movies we definitely shouldn't have been watching and games that our parents didn't even know anything about. But we definitely shouldn't have been playing them. We're taking everything we know about suspense, horror and narrative and putting it into our work.

robots make content

We've been putting time into showing everyone how we work and why we do it the way we do. You can see some of it on our YouTube channel and our Twitch channel. As well as The Poacher related content when it arrives, we're hard at work making content about 3D modelling, coding and games. You might also see us play the occasional game, because we're still all about making time for enjoying other people's work.

robots make art

If we had a claim to have any kind of jam, this would be it. Chris is a 3D modeller: organic and hard modelling, retopology, texturing and rendering across the whole pipeline. We know where our strengths lie, and that's why we've invested time and money into building a unique environment. When a player enters our game world, we don't want them seeing major assets they recognise from countless other games. We have industry standard toolchains and pipelines to help us achieve our goals: Unreal Engine, SideFX Houdini with Houdini Engine, Blender, ZBrush, 3DCoat and the Adobe Substance suite.

robots give back

In May 2023, with our tiny Twitch followership in tow, we decided we'd join up with other members of our stream team to raise money for Cure Cancer Australia's Game On Cancer campaign. We threw down the gauntlet (to ourselves) and with the help of our wonderful community and friends, we made a game, live on stream, in 24 hours, raising over $2,000 for groundbreaking early stage cancer research in the process. You can download Good Dog, Best Dog by clicking right here. Oh, and we also ate bugs for the donation milestones.