A simple game, straight from the heart of a studio that's been around the block

You don't hear much about game developers like the U.K.'s Dlala Studios: neither a AAA megalith nor a fashionable indie, but a smallish outfit that's been chipping away at the coalface for years, making characterfully animated versions of other people's properties. I suspect there are more of these studios out there than any of us realize, propping up bigger projects with their work-for-hire services in between trying to get their own games off the ground.

You might know Dlala from its 2020 take on Rare's vintage beat-em-up Battletoads, or from its 2023 Mickey Mouse platformer, Disney Illusion Island. Now it's time for the studio's "one for me," in the form of Murals, a combat-heavy isometric action-adventure that looks like Hades but is chasing something much simpler and more nostalgic: a linear cartoon romp full of wit and quirky charm.

I found Dlala in an appealingly scruffy workspace on a small industrial estate in the unremarkable commuter town of Witham in Essex, a 40-minute train ride from London. Founder and local boy Aj Grand-Scrutton (huge, chatty, barrel-chested, with the hair and beard of Gandalf) proudly gave a tour in his slides, apologizing for the absence of his dog and the number of monitors plugged into his PC (seven). He finished with the cinema projection room management had built in secret while the staff was working remotely during COVID.

For a studio like this, it's all about keeping the lights on, but Grand-Scrutton is careful not to disown Battletoads and Illusion Island , which he says the studio was given a lot of freedom on, as mere work-for-hire.

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