"Los Angeles is outrageously expensive; the age of the dollar taco is sadly long gone"

What do you get if you cross a SpaceX engineer, a TV writer, and a former professor?

The answer is Mad Herons, a new Los Angeles-based indie studio working on their comedy-focused debut title, Send In The Clown.

Technical and game design lead Nick Park was formerly an engineer at SpaceX and Nvidia, while creative and audio lead Jacques Mouledoux was a writer on the Paramount+ TV show iCarly, as well as a contributor to the satirical news site Hard Drive. Rounding out the co-founders is operations and strategic lead Karen Park, a veteran of the LA improv comedy scene who was previously a professor at the University of Pittsburgh.

The trio are aiming to draw on their diverse experiences and shared love of comedy to make a game about a clown saving a 12-year-old's disastrous birthday party – a game that makes a selling point of only being an hour long. GamesIndustry.biz asked the three studio founders what makes for a good comedy game, and how they're finding funding on America's expensive West Coast.

Relatively few games companies target comedy, which can be notoriously hard to do – what do you see as some of the most successful examples of comedy games, and why do they work?

Jacques Mouledoux : Comedy is certainly hard, but there are so many hilarious games. My favourite game of all time is Portal, which is so funny, but I also love Untitled Goose Game, Disco Elysium, Earthbound, and so many more.

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