---
title: "Metacortex Studios"
url: "https://metacortexstudios.com/"
description: "Metacortex Studios is an independent game studio. It designs games around one idea, that a world should respond the way a real one does."
site: "Metacortex Studios"
---

Independent game studio

# The world already taught you how to play.

Metacortex Studios designs games around one idea: a world should respond the way a real one does, so what you already know is how you play.

## Games

Survival at three scales: a frozen mountain, a puzzle board, and deep space.

![Black Skies: a survival camp in the snow](https://metacortexstudios.com/assets/images/black-skies-camp.jpg)

PC · Survival simulation · Early Access

### Black Skies

An EMP takes out modern infrastructure. Cross cold mountain terrain, manage your survival, and make hard decisions to stay alive.

[View on Steam](https://store.steampowered.com/app/4341750/Black_Skies/) [blackskyevent.com](https://blackskyevent.com/)

![Survival Slide: the game logo with its five supplies](https://metacortexstudios.com/assets/images/survival-slide-logo-art.jpg)

Mobile · Match puzzle · On Google Play

### Survival Slide

Slide whole rows and columns, match supplies, clear the map, and scavenge your way to the city.

[Get it on Google Play](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.metacortex.survivalslide&utm_source=website&utm_campaign=home) [About the game](https://metacortexstudios.com/games/survival-slide/)

_Image: Placeholder art: a planet outline and a small spacecraft among stars_

PC · Space simulation · In development

### Interstellar Survival

Working title. The final name may change.

A hard-science space game about waking up as a human mind inside an autonomous spacecraft, and finding out what it can do.

More when there is more to show.

Design principles

## Instincts over tutorials.

The goal behind every Metacortex design: if you know what something does in life, you should already know what it does in the game. Each game works toward that one system at a time.

### Things should behave like what they are.

Materials should come from somewhere and go somewhere. If it looks like it burns, it should burn.

### Effort should leave a mark.

Working on something should change it, as far as the tool allows, with results that look like results rather than a number on a bar.

### Objects can carry meaning.

Some things matter for what they remind you of, not what they do. The design treats that as real too.

Where a game has to simplify, it should simplify in the direction you'd guess.

The studio

## An independent studio, making games since 2024.

Metacortex Studios LLC makes games about subjects worth getting right. Each project starts from something worth caring about and is built toward one standard: the world should behave the way you expect.

Contract work

### Game development and design, for hire.

Metacortex Studios takes on game development and design contract work.

[Contact the studio](https://metacortexstudios.com/contact/?topic=work)