Indie games, built with AI.
Macabre Cat makes platformers, metroidvanias, puzzle, horror and role-playing games on Dead Eye, the engine we built for them. AI does the heavy lifting. Our team makes every call.
Five kinds of game. One standard.
We make the games we grew up losing weekends to, built to the bar of a much bigger studio. Every one runs on Dead Eye.
Platformers
Tight jumps, honest hitboxes and levels you learn with your thumbs.
Metroidvanias
LazarusInterconnected worlds that open up as you do. Lazarus is our first.
Puzzle
Mechanics with one clever idea each, explored until it's exhausted.
Horror
Dread built from light, sound and what you didn't quite see.
Role-playing
Parties, choices and dice rolls that carry weight for the whole game.
Lazarus
Five chapters. One way down.
Lazarus, our first title, is a hand-crafted metroidvania told across five chapters, each one its own world: a watching spire, a drowned forest, a dead tree, a sealed facility and an observatory at the bottom of it all. More soon.
- Genre
- Metroidvania
- Engine
- Dead Eye
- Platforms
- PC, consoles, mobile
- Status
- In development
Our engine. Built in-house, for exactly these games.
Dead Eye is the engine every Macabre Cat game runs on: 2D and 2.5D worlds, real-time lighting and atmosphere, movement that feels right under a thumb, and AI tooling woven through the editor so a small team ships like a big one.
Built for 2D and 2.5D
Layered worlds with real depth, light and fog, running at a locked frame rate on every platform we ship to.
AI in the toolchain
Blockouts, prop passes, animation cleanup and dialogue drafts generate in the editor, then wait for a person.
Ships everywhere
One codebase for PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, iOS and Android.
Indie team, big-studio polish.
AI takes the repetitive work off our plate so the team can spend its time on the parts players feel: the jump, the light, the moment the music drops out.
Block out
A designer builds every room by hand in grey boxes and plays it until the route feels right. Nothing gets art until it's fun.
Generate
Dead Eye's AI tools fill the blockout with candidates: props, lighting passes, enemy variants, first-draft lines. Fast to make, easy to bin.
Polish
Artists, designers and writers keep what's good, repaint what's close and cut the rest. A person signs off every frame that ships.
Our partners.
Make Lazarus with us.
We're a small team of designers, artists and engineers who care about feel above everything. Remote-friendly, in no hurry.
Gameplay Engineer
Dead Eye Engine · Remote-friendly
Own the movement, combat and camera that make a metroidvania feel good in the hands.
- C++ or Rust, obsessed with game feel
- Physics, animation, input latency
- Shipped a 2D or 2.5D game
Environment Artist
Art · Remote-friendly
Paint the five chapters of Lazarus, from blockout to the last wisp of fog.
- 2D and 2.5D environments
- Strong light, colour and silhouette
- Comfortable directing AI-assisted passes
Level Designer
Design · Remote-friendly
Build the rooms, routes and secrets that make Lazarus worth exploring twice.
- Metroidvania or platformer levels
- Blockout first, art later
- Lives in playtest notes
Don't see your role? Write to us anyway. jobs@macabrecat.com
Questions, answered.
The things people usually ask a studio like ours. Something else on your mind? Write to us.
Lazarus is coming. Be there when it wakes.
Join the playtest list for early builds, notes from the studio and the occasional look behind the curtain.