Maddy Makes Games

What Maddy Makes Games is

Maddy Makes Games is an independent studio founded by the game maker Maddy Thorson, whose website presents her work under that studio name and describes her as a lifelong maker of games. The site acts as a personal catalogue: it lists her released games in date order, together with articles about design and a set of tools built for other developers.

The studio's public footprint is small by design. The site does not publish a founding date, an employee count or a list of investors, and it names Thorson as its owner and the maker of most of the work. The same site states that Thorson now works at EXOK, a studio she and her friends created, while the Maddy Makes Games pages continue to hold the earlier catalogue.

The studio also distributes its games through its own itch.io store page, which carries the Maddy Makes Games name and hosts the same releases as the website. The two pages serve the same purpose: a direct shop and archive for the studio's work, independent of the large storefronts where its best-known game is also sold.

Celeste

Celeste is the title listed under Maddy Makes Games in our database. On Steam the game carries a release date of January 25, 2018, with Maddy Makes Games Inc. listed as publisher and, alongside Extremely OK Games, Ltd., as developer. The Steam listing classifies it as an action, adventure and indie game and links to the game's own website.

The game's official site credits the team behind it by name: Maddy Thorson and Noel Berry as creators, Amora B. for art, Pedro Medeiros for pixel art, Lena Raine for music, Power Up Audio for sound and Heidy Motta for additional work. The same site carries an ESRB rating of E10+ with descriptors for fantasy violence, alcohol reference and mild language, and links to a press kit and a changelog.

The game's site also keeps a changelog of updates, a page setting out permissions for video creators, a downloadable press kit and a contact address, which the studio uses in place of a formal press office. These pages are the studio's own record of how the game has changed since launch.

Catalogue and tools

Beyond Celeste, the studio's site lists a back catalogue of smaller releases with dates running from 2004 to 2024, spanning web, downloadable and small-format console-style games. Several of those entries are marked as collaborations with other makers, including musicians and artists, and the site records the platform for each release alongside its date.

The site also publishes written articles on design and technical subjects, including pieces on the game's physics and on narrative interpretation, and it ships two tools for other developers: a multi-purpose level editor and a build system for a classic platformer editing format. Taken together, the pages function as the studio's documentation of its own work rather than as a corporate site.

The entries mix platforms rather than settling on one: the catalogue records releases for Windows PC, for browser plug-ins and for small-format consoles, with the earliest dated 2004 and the most recent 2024. Two of the listed releases are marked as made with EXOK, the studio Thorson later joined, which shows how the catalogue and her later work overlap.

Games

• Celeste

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