Pretty Cool Games has launched in the UK with Human: Fall Flat veterans Sitara Shefta and Will Dudley, Coreblazer funding tied to Hypergryph, and an unannounced physics-driven AA debut.
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A new UK studio starts with rare momentum and a useful question
Pretty Cool Games, a new UK indie studio co-founded by former Human: Fall Flat developers Sitara Shefta and Will Dudley, has secured funding for its first project before revealing the game itself. That is the concrete development, and it immediately gives this launch a sharper edge than the usual studio announcement: in a funding market developers describe as difficult, a small team with a physics-game pedigree has already convinced outside backers that its prototypes are worth supporting.
Video Games Chronicle reports that Pretty Cool Games is based in Leeds, while Game Developer describes the outfit as fully remote. Those descriptions are compatible if the company is UK-based with a Leeds identity and remote working practices, but the sources frame the setup differently. The studio’s public hiring page on Work With Indies also calls Pretty Cool a fully remote UK-based studio, saying it is making original new IP for PC and console.
The confirmed leadership is the real anchor here. Shefta is CEO, and Dudley is chief creative officer. VGC says Shefta was previously CEO and studio director of No Brakes Games, where she set up and directed the development team that worked on Human: Fall Flat. GamesIndustry.biz says she was CEO and studio head of No Brakes Games Tenerife, directed development of Human: Fall Flat, was recently elected to the TIGA Board of Directors, and serves on the BAFTA Games Committee. Dudley, according to GamesIndustry.biz, was an original team member on Human: Fall Flat and has previously worked at Sony Interactive Entertainment, Lionhead Studios, Rare, and Marmalade Game Studio.
For players, the interesting part is not the résumé line by itself. It is that Pretty Cool Games is being built around a design problem these developers already know well: how to make messy, physical, player-authored comedy feel intentional rather than accidental.
The Human: Fall Flat connection is about production as much as prestige
Human: Fall Flat is the pedigree headline because it is one of the clearest modern examples of physics comedy turning into a long-tail indie success. Metro writes that the game has sold 58 million copies. Separately, Game Developer’s July 2026 interview with No Brakes Games founder Tomas Sakalauskas says Human: Fall Flat has topped 60 million players worldwide. Those are different measurements, sales versus players, so they should not be treated as a single interchangeable figure. Together, they show the scale of the audience attached to the series.
That context matters for Pretty Cool Games because physics games are deceptively hard to scale. In Game Developer’s interview, Sakalauskas described Human: Fall Flat as fundamentally a technology project built around physics and engineering, saying you make systems and let behaviors emerge from them rather than relying solely on design documents. He also spoke about the challenge of growing from solo development into a larger production structure, including burnout and the difficulty of preserving iteration.
Pretty Cool Games is entering that same design territory with leaders who have already seen how expensive, funny, fragile, and rewarding physics-led development can become. VGC quotes Dudley describing the studio’s debut as a “truly unique and characterful new game” in the AA space with “fantastically playful, physics-based gameplay.” He also called it a sandbox game focused on player expression, emergent gameplay, and systems.
That does not confirm a spiritual successor to Human: Fall Flat, and the studio has not announced a title, release date, platforms, price, or publisher. It does confirm that Pretty Cool is consciously working in a space where feel, systems, animation, level design, and failure states have to cooperate. If a physics platformer or sandbox makes people laugh, it is usually because the rules are legible enough for chaos to read as player authorship.
Hypergryph-linked funding gives the debut project room, but not certainty
The financing is the second reason this Pretty Cool Games studio announcement stands out. VGC reports that Pretty Cool has secured funding from Coreblazer, the investment arm of Chinese game company Hypergryph, and says the deal is Hypergryph’s first European investment. Game Developer also reports financing from Coreblazer, but describes Hypergryph as Singapore-based and calls the move the company’s first UK investment. GamesIndustry.biz describes Hypergryph as a Chinese developer best known for Arknights: Endfield and says the funding amount is undisclosed.
That is a small but important sourcing conflict. The sources agree on the core point: Pretty Cool Games has outside financing through Coreblazer, linked to Hypergryph. They differ on whether to frame Hypergryph geographically as Chinese or Singapore-based, and whether the milestone is first UK investment or first European investment. Since none of the provided material includes corporate registration details, the safest reading is that the funding is confirmed, the amount is undisclosed, and the exact regional “first” claim depends on the outlet’s framing.
Hypergryph head of investment Clare Yang is quoted by both VGC and Game Developer as saying that the creativity and potential of the team could be felt from the earliest prototypes. Yang also called Shefta and Dudley “true entrepreneurs” and said Hypergryph is excited to support Pretty Cool as it brings its vision to life.
The practical consequence is that Pretty Cool has enough backing to move from prototypes into production, but this is not a blank cheque announcement. GamesIndustry.biz reports that most of the studio’s funding is allocated to its debut title, and that Pretty Cool is still seeking additional investment and a publishing partner. In other words, Hypergryph funding makes the first project worth watching because it validates the prototype stage and supports hiring, but it does not yet answer the commercial questions players usually care about: where the game will launch, when it will be shown, or how large the final scope will be.
The first game sounds playful, physical, and still deliberately undefined
Pretty Cool’s debut project is confirmed to be early in development. VGC says the studio has been working on prototypes that attracted attention from investors and publishers, and has now started work on its first project. Game Developer describes it as a double-A, physics-based experience focused on player expression. VGC adds the terms sandbox, emergent gameplay, and systems.
Shefta’s comments to Game Developer give the clearest sense of the production philosophy. She said the studio will take a gameplay-first approach: the team has an idea, prototypes it quickly, tests how it feels in players’ hands, and iterates from there. That is the right language for a physics-driven game because the paper version is rarely the truth. A jump, shove, tumble, grab, or chain reaction can look fine in a design doc and feel dead in motion. The only reliable judge is the controller, the timing window, and the player’s willingness to try something stupid twice.
GamesIndustry.biz adds a more revealing creative mood board. Shefta told the outlet the debut draws inspiration from Nintendo, Hazelight, the immersive experiences of Disney theme parks, and the physical comedy of films such as The Pink Panther. She also said the team wants to create something memorable, timeless, and fun enough that players remember it with delight years after first playing.
Those references point toward authored playfulness rather than pure slapstick. Nintendo implies readable mechanics and toy-like rules. Hazelight suggests co-operative or relationship-driven interaction, though no co-op mode is confirmed in the provided sources. Disney theme parks suggest staged discovery and environmental delight. The Pink Panther points toward physical comedy built from timing, personality, and escalation. That interpretation should be treated as expectation rather than fact, but it is a useful way to read the confirmed pitch: Pretty Cool is building a systems-led sandbox where the joke comes from what players do.
The hiring plan says a lot about scope and studio culture
Pretty Cool Games is hiring now, and the roles tell us where production currently needs support. VGC says the current priority is artists and level designers. Work With Indies lists openings for concept artist, lead designer, environment artist, and level designer in the United Kingdom. GamesIndustry.biz reports that Pretty Cool currently has four full-time staff and plans to expand to ten, with imminent hires in lead design, level design, environment art, and concept art. Future plans include QA and contract positions for character art, audio, UI, and a composer.
That is a compact team for an AA physics sandbox, which makes scope discipline one of the story’s quiet pressure points. Shefta told GamesIndustry.biz the studio is keeping the core team small, ambitious, and practical. She also said Pretty Cool wants to build a sustainable studio that is fair to employees, citing share schemes as one way the team could benefit together if the studio’s games succeed.
The studio’s Work With Indies page lists benefits including 25 days holiday plus UK bank holidays, EMI share options, life insurance, private healthcare, flexible working hours, team events and meetups, and remote working. It also describes the team as small, friendly, and people-focused, with everyone empowered to contribute meaningfully to games and studio culture.
That employee-first pitch lands differently in the current market. GamesIndustry.biz quotes Shefta saying there is “a lot of difficulty in raising investment at the moment,” while adding that demand for fresh new games has not reduced. Metro’s interview excerpt with Shefta similarly describes layoffs, closures, risk-averse investors, and higher expectations around proving an idea before funding. The UK Games Fund, in a separate July 2026 announcement, said it had named its largest cohort of funded companies since launching in 2015 and noted an additional £28.5 million over three years to support the UK independent games sector. Pretty Cool is not listed in that UK Games Fund cohort in the provided material, but the announcement gives useful background: UK indies are trying to build in a market where public funding, private capital, and prototype proof are all part of the survival map.
What players can safely expect, and what is still off the table
For now, Pretty Cool Games is a studio to watch rather than a game to wishlist. The confirmed details are narrow but meaningful: the studio is UK-based and fully remote, led by Sitara Shefta and Will Dudley, shaped by Human: Fall Flat development experience, funded through Coreblazer with Hypergryph-linked backing, and working on an original AA physics-based sandbox focused on player expression and emergent systems.
The unconfirmed list is longer. There is no announced title. There are no confirmed platforms beyond the studio’s broader Work With Indies description that it makes PC and console games. There is no release window, price, publisher, storefront page, trailer, genre label beyond physics-based sandbox language, or stated multiplayer feature set. Because GamesIndustry.biz reports that Pretty Cool is still seeking a publishing partner and additional investment, players should expect a careful reveal cadence rather than immediate launch details.
That patience is healthy. The worst version of this announcement would be to flatten Pretty Cool Games into “the next Human: Fall Flat” before the team has shown its own game. The better read is more specific: two Human Fall Flat developers with deep platformer, sandbox, and family-friendly play experience are building a small UK studio around fast prototyping, remote hiring, and a physics-comedy design lane that already has a large proven audience.
If Pretty Cool can make its systems expressive without becoming unreadable, and if its level design supports chaos without letting players feel lost, the Hypergryph funding could give the team enough runway to find the fun before the market asks it to explain everything in a trailer. Until the reveal, the smart move is to watch the hiring, funding, and publisher signals. In small physics games, the first public footage usually tells the truth quickly: either the body language sings, or it falls flat in the wrong way.