Little Red Dog Games

Little Red Dog Games was an independent PC game developer known for narrative-driven strategy, political simulation and space survival games. Founded by designer and project director Ryan Hewer in approximately 2012–2013, the studio combined geopolitical subject matter with satire, humor and roguelike mechanics. Its games explored diplomacy, domestic government, espionage and survival through management decisions and interactive storytelling.

The studio’s commercial debut, Rogue State (2015), placed players in charge of a fictional post-revolutionary Middle Eastern republic. Built with Adventure Game Studio, it combined domestic political management with international diplomacy. Subsequent releases broadened the studio’s approach to simulation: Deep Sixed (2018) focused on managing a spacecraft in a hazardous deep-space setting, while Precipice (2019) portrayed Cold War diplomacy and subterfuge through anthropomorphic animal heads of state.

Development and later work

Little Red Dog Games moved its core development to the open-source Godot Engine after its initial release. Godot powered Deep Sixed, Precipice and Rogue State Revolution, making the engine an important part of the studio’s later production history.

Released in March 2021 and published by Modern Wolf, Rogue State Revolution reimagined the original political management game as a 4X strategy roguelite. It incorporated full-motion video cinematics alongside its political simulation systems. Across these projects, the studio’s work brought together game design, narrative development, gameplay programming and historical or geopolitical simulation modeling.

The company operated as a fully remote, internationally distributed team, with contributors across the United States, the United Kingdom and continental Europe. Supernova Capital acquired the studio in February 2023 as part of a deal intended to support team and project expansion.

Little Red Dog Games ceased development operations on January 22, 2024, laying off its entire team, including founding leadership. Its UK corporate entity was subsequently dissolved in October 2025. The studio’s released games remain its principal public body of work.