By Patrick Garratt

Lawrence Grabowski and Karl Francis left senior roles at Rebellion and Unity to found an independent studio with nothing but savings. Three years on, they have around 30 staff, a physics-driven sandbox in closed testing, and a funding route worth studying given the game industry's current climate of employment woes.

Getting off the floor

In early 2023, Francis worked at Unity and Grabowski at Rebellion. Both had spent a decade watching the industry from inside large operations, mulling over the formation of an independent studio. What they lacked were means. The year previously, they'd flown to Iceland at the invitation of the Eve Online alumni network, meeting VCs and angel investors in Reykjavik. The trip was designed, at least partly, to put them off.

"They asked us lots of challenging questions," says Grabowski. "'Are you insane? Are you sure you're ready for this? You're going to have to throw in everything – your savings, your financial security, perhaps your sanity.' I think they tried to put us off, which is probably quite a sensible thing to do. But they didn't. We came home from that and said, 'OK, we're going to do it.'"

Both founders quit their jobs in 2023 with enough money to get them to the end of the year: "The cash was going to run out in December," says Grabowski.

Their route to early capital was through SEIS and EIS – the UK government's Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme and Enterprise Investment Scheme – which offer significant tax relief to early investors.

"In some cases the capital risk would only be about 30 per cent: if the company fails, they'll get quite a lot of their original investment back," says Francis. "It's a lot lower risk, because the UK environment is quite hard. It's different from America in terms of people's risk-taking approach."

"No one wants to be the first one to put money in something high risk. It's generating that hype and that FOMO. Once you get past that first hundred thousand, it starts to move."

Their strategy for generating that momentum was relentless, structured communication. From September 2023 onwards, they produced monthly shareholder updates and sent them to people who were not yet shareholders – potential investors and interested parties.

"We'd say, 'Look, tell me to fuck off if you want, but I'll keep you updated,'" says Grabowski.

"Most people, after a number of months, would eventually say, 'Actually, I'm quite impressed.'"

Friends and family money followed angels, and then a UK government grant came through in 2024, the money arriving earlier this year. The studio has since grown to approximately 30 people, half of them employees in the UK, half international contractors.

With Project S, its mysterious first game, now in testing, Chaotic Works is in business.

Treating people decently

Chaotic Works has not hired a single person from an application. Every member of the team was identified and approached by the founders directly, with several key staffers joining based on assets they'd made for the Unreal Engine Marketplace.

Community and social manager Amy Brakespear joined more recently after a period as an adviser, brought on fully when the studio's government funding arrived this year.

"People that genuinely care about you, that openness and willingness to show you everything within the business – that's just unheard of in the world," she tells Knowledge. "To be picked is just, well, I'll probably never have that again in my life. And then that channels through your work and you always want to put in high effort."

The transparency Brakespear describes extends to runway, funding status, and share-option structures – which the founders document and explain in detail to everyone on the team, including contractors. Francis frames this as baseline courtesy.

"What surprised me is that a lot of this is just the very basics of treating people decently," he says.

Project S: physics, weather, and why Far Cry 2 still matters

Project S remains officially unannounced, and both founders are careful about detail. What they will confirm: it's a sandbox game, not an extraction shooter.

"Look at Minecraft or Day-Z or Rust – that kind of server duration," says Grabowski.

Players build mobile bases inside physics-simulated vehicles and try to survive and achieve goals in science fiction centred on hostile weather. More clarity is promised later this year.

Design references are Crysis, Far Cry 2, Fuel, Battlefield 3 – all from the 2007–2012 period when physics simulation and systemic environmental design were "the thing" in triple-A. The Ubisoft shooter, especially, has marked Project S.

"Far Cry 2," says a misty-eyed Francis. "The environmental response. A grenade over there, and then the tree sets on fire, the house sets on fire, the ammo box sets on fire, and it's all reacting in a different way than you expected. You feel the game behaving the way the world should. That's cool. And I think games have kind of lost that. They've been quite safe because those systemic things are a bit more hardcore than an ultra-casual experience. If you look at later Far Cry games, they just don't have that magic and grittiness of the second one."

Chaotic Works is heading back to physical unpredictability via speculative climate fiction and physics-based weather simulation. The narrative layer centres on corporate dystopia (think Alien) and weather control.

"It's a bit Weyland-Yutani," says Grabowski. "There's a giga-company equivalent to Apple, Google and SpaceX combined that basically controls global weather. It's going to shit. You're caught in the middle of it. They're telling you, 'Hey, employee, go fix it.' And you're like, 'What the fuck?'"

The studio has launched an ARG teaser site to begin building lore, and is deliberately avoiding the creation of expensive trailers as a form of marketing.

"You can spend a substantial amount of money on cinematics," says Francis.

"Making an actual game that people really care about, that's the really, really hard bit. And all our attention as a studio should be focused on that. People care about the gameplay the most."