Supermassive Games

Supermassive Games is a British video game studio based in Guildford, Surrey, founded in 2008 by brothers Pete and Joe Samuels. Pete had previously worked at Psygnosis and Electronic Arts. The studio started as a second-party developer for Sony, building downloadable content for LittleBigPlanet and motion-controlled games for PlayStation Move, before finding its identity in narrative horror. In July 2022, the studio was fully acquired by Nordisk Games, a division of the Danish entertainment company Nordisk Film. The co-founders stepped down from their roles in 2024. The studio employed around 350 people before layoffs of roughly 90 staff reduced that number.

I have played a lot of Supermassive’s catalog and the branching narrative format is genuinely one of my favorite things in games when it works. The Quarry has to be one of the best horror games of the last decade.

Until Dawn and the Breakout Years

Until Dawn was originally conceived as a PlayStation Move title before being reworked into a PlayStation 4 game. Released in 2015, it became an unexpected commercial and critical success, winning a BAFTA and establishing Supermassive as the leading studio in interactive horror. The format, a group of characters in a horror scenario where player decisions determine who lives and who dies, resonated in a way the studio had not anticipated. A remake developed by Ballistic Moon, staffed with former Supermassive leads, released for PlayStation 5 and PC in October 2024. An Until Dawn film adaptation released in theaters in April 2025.

The Dark Pictures Anthology

At Gamescom 2018 Supermassive announced a partnership with Bandai Namco Entertainment to produce The Dark Pictures Anthology, a series of standalone horror games released at roughly six-month intervals. Season One comprised four entries: Man of Medan (2019), a ghost ship horror; Little Hope (2020), set around a cursed Massachusetts town; House of Ashes (2021), placing characters in underground Sumerian ruins; and The Devil in Me (2022), a serial killer hotel inspired by H.H. Holmes. Each game can be played solo or cooperatively online or in couch co-op. The season concluded with The Devil in Me and the studio moved away from Bandai Namco for future entries. Directive 8020, the fifth game in the series and the start of a new season, released on May 12, 2026, published by Supermassive independently. The studio also confirmed the series is no longer strictly capped at eight games.

The Quarry and Casting of Frank Stone

The Quarry released in June 2022 through 2K Games as a standalone title and spiritual successor to Until Dawn, set at a summer camp with a monster-film influence rather than the supernatural tone of the anthology. The Casting of Frank Stone, developed in collaboration with Behaviour Interactive and set in the Dead by Daylight universe, released in September 2024. Both expanded the studio’s reach beyond the anthology format while keeping the same branching decision structure at their core.

Little Nightmares III and Recent Work

Outside of horror, Supermassive developed Little Nightmares III, the third entry in Bandai Namco’s platformer horror series, which released in October 2025. The game marks the studio’s most significant move into a franchise they did not originate.