Summerfall Studios

Summerfall Studios is an independent game developer based in Melbourne, Australia, creating character-driven narrative games. Its work combines branching dialogue, illustrated characters and interactive storytelling, with projects spanning musical roleplaying and roguelite deckbuilding. The studio develops and supports its own intellectual properties, rather than offering work-for-hire or client co-development services.

Conceived in 2017, the studio grew from conversations at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco about branching narratives without traditional RPG combat gating. Its founders brought together experience in game writing, production and the music industry. Summerfall publicly introduced itself at PAX Australia in 2019, announcing its debut project as Chorus: An Adventure Musical.

Musical storytelling

That project became Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical, published through a partnership with Humble Games and released on 10 August 2023. It brought the studio’s interest in character-led stories together with branching interactive dialogue and musical storytelling. The game launched across PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.

Summerfall followed it with Stray Gods: Orpheus, a narrative DLC expansion released on 27 June 2024 and starring Anthony Rapp. Together, the original game and its expansion established musical narrative games as a central part of the studio’s early catalogue.

Expanding into deckbuilding

The studio subsequently developed Malys, an exorcism-themed roguelite deckbuilder that integrates narrative with card-based mechanics. After crowdfunding, it entered Steam Early Access on 27 June 2025 and reached its full version 1.0 release on 24 October 2025.

Across these projects, Summerfall’s supported capabilities include narrative design, 2D character illustration, technical art and comic-style visual aesthetics. Its catalogue reflects an interest in carrying character-driven storytelling into different game formats, from an interactive musical to a deckbuilding adventure.