Gardens

About Gardens

Gardens Interactive, operating under gardens.dev, is a fully-remote video game development studio with operational bases in Los Angeles and Portland. The company was established in 2020, emerging from stealth in February 2022, through the collaboration of co-founders Chris Bell, his brother Stephen Bell, and Lexie Dostal. This trio of seasoned developers shares a history of working on critically acclaimed titles. Chris Bell's portfolio includes design roles on *Journey*, *Sky: Children of the Light*, and *What Remains of Edith Finch*. Stephen Bell brings narrative direction expertise from his work on *Blaseball* and *What Remains of Edith Finch*. Lexie Dostal, the studio's CTO, is known for co-creating the platformer *Dustforce*. Their collective experience on projects emphasizing unique multiplayer connections and storytelling forms the bedrock of Gardens' philosophy.

The studio's mission is to build lush, living online worlds that foster meaningful relationships between players. It operates with a focus on creating a healthy and sustainable work environment, offering a 35-hour work week and full benefits to its team, which includes talent from studios behind major games like *Marvel's Spider-Man*, *Skyrim*, and *Ratchet & Clank*. Financially, Gardens has secured significant backing from the investment community. After an initial seed round of $4.5 million, the company raised a substantial $31.3 million in a Series A round co-led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Krafton. This round attracted a syndicate of high-profile investors and advisors from across the tech and gaming industries, including figures associated with Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, and Tencent.

Gardens' business model centers on the development and sale of PC and console video games. The company's inaugural project is an unannounced, ambitious online fantasy game. Described as an "ever-evolving online PvPvE fantasy adventure sandbox ARPG," the game aims to merge cooperative and competitive gameplay in a shared, dynamic world. It builds on the founders' past successes by creating novel cooperative mechanics that reward players for helping one another, while still allowing for the possibility of conflict and betrayal. The game, being developed with Unreal Engine 5, is designed to provide new experiences with each playthrough, evolving over time with its community. By presenting a playable prototype at the 2023 Game Developers Conference, the team demonstrated its vision, which was instrumental in securing its Series A funding.