Celeste and TowerFall developers form new studio

The developers behind Celeste and TowerFall, formerly collectively known as Matt Makes Games, have established a new studio called Extremely OK Games (EXOK).

Founder Matt Thorson said in a blog post that Celeste’s success has enabled the team to relocate to Vancouver to work together under one roof on a permanent basis.

While Matt Makes Games will remain listed as the publisher/developer of TowerFall and Celeste, future work from the team will come from EXOK.

“I started Matt Makes Games when I was working solo in my parents’ basement, and I never thought I’d be working with such an amazing team on games of this scale,” said Thorson. “On TowerFall, my collaborators took a larger role than I anticipated, and on Celeste, it was obvious that calling ourselves Matt Makes Games had become silly.

“Forming EXOK has also conveniently allowed us to restructure things in a more equitable fashion, so that we can all share ownership over our collective efforts.”

The studio will release a new and final story chapter for Celeste, Chapter 9: Farewell, for free on September 9.

It will feature over 100 “very hard” new levels, “several brand new mechanics and items to discover and play with”, plus 40 minutes of new music from Lena Raine.

While EXOK is targeting a same-day release for all platforms, Thorson said there’s a chance the Xbox One version might launch after September 9 as “coordinating this patch across all consoles was challenging for our tiny studio”.

Additionally, he revealed that EXOK is already working on its next game, codenamed EXOK1.

“We’re excited to share more about it when the time is right,” he said. “Right now we’re still in a very exploratory phase of development, sussing out what this thing wants to be.”