I believe in creatives putting their own name on things.
Studio Massimo Gauthier Inc. is the entity through which I (Massimo Gauthier) and my creative collaborators on the projects I direct interact with institutions, but it is not a wider-public-facing entity. My wish is for people to recognize works and the people behind them, and an impersonal brand name would distract from that.
That said, it is useful for the press, government, and commercial partners to have a single thing to refer to and deal with, so here we are.
About me
I have been working on games on my own since 2016 and professionally since 2020. I mainly do programming, design, and writing.
Most of my experience has been with Game Maker (GML) as well as with my own 2D engine written in ODIN, though I’ve dabbled with many other tools and languages.
I’ve worked on a number of shipped commercial projects, most notably as lead programmer on Summitsphere’s Antonblast. More information can be found on my portfolio.
Projects
Diorama Break
Diorama Break is our first project, and the one the studio was created for. It’s a tactical JRPG-style game that aims to provide a unique and compelling combat system and narrative. You can learn more about the project from the official website and Press Kit.
The game’s combat system draws heavily from an early prototype I created from 2020-2021, though Diorama Break is far more fleshed out. I created a short series of video devlogs documenting the process of creating that, which can be found on my youtube channel.
At the moment, we have entered into full production of a vertical slice demo. If you’re interested in investing in the full game, please contact me at massimogauthier1@gmail.com
Massimodin
Massimodin is the proprietary 2D game engine used for our projects, written in ODIN, a C-like language for low-level development. The initial version was created by me between May and September 2024 and was fully featured, including:
- A cache-friendly and performant compositional entity system.
- A file-watching based automatic incremental build system with asset packing and runtime asset reloading.
- A sprite system with efficient texture packing, batched rendering, animation support, and the ability to directly read aseprite files.
- An audio system with full FMOD integration.
- Support for custom GLSL fragment shaders.
- Customizable debugging tools such as an in-engine debug shell and support for profiling with Tracy.
- Ability to build to Windows, Linux, and Nintendo Switch.
A fully custom engine and toolchain allows us to easily tweak and develop in-house tools that suit our specific needs while cutting out the bloat that plagues most third-party software nowadays. This gives us the ability to efficiently produce beautiful and performant games.
To learn more about the engine’s development, you can check out my substack blog.
Contact
For business inquiries please reach out to me personally via one of the following channels:
- Email: studio@massimogauthier.com
- Discord: @Massimog