Ten Questions With… Cupkisu Studios

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A missing medical student, a snowbound town where everyone has something to hide, and a private investigator forced to fight with evidence and logic as often as conventional weapons. Nightmere I brings these ingredients together in a hand-drawn detective mystery infused with psychological horror and set during the wonderfully inconvenient pre-smartphone era of 1991.

The project is the debut title from Cupkisu Studios, a three-person team consisting of Cupkisu, Starstreaks and Ayabadaya. What began as a small passion project has grown into a two-part story supported by an audience of more than 290,000 followers. Its recently relaunched Kickstarter reached its CA$15,000 funding goal in only three hours, while a playable demo is already available on Steam.

For this edition of Ten Questions With…, we spoke to Cupkisu Studios about repeatedly rebuilding the demo, balancing an interactive mystery, the lessons learned from cancelling its first Kickstarter, the team’s opposition to generative AI replacing artists, and the unusual combination of games that helped shape Nightmere.

First of all, can you give us a quick introduction to yourselves and Cupkisu, and tell us a little about your roles on Nightmere?

Hi! We’re Cupkisu Studios, the team behind Nightmere and the popular account Cupkisu. The team currently comprises just the three of us. I handle the overall artistic direction, game design and 2D art; Starstreaks handles the programming and game mechanics; Ayabadaya co-writes the story, makes the pixel art and contributes to artistic direction. We’re all really excited about being able to expand on Nightmere’s story! We have faith that it will impact people just as much as it has impacted us.

You’ve described Nightmere as something that grew from a small passion project with friends into a much larger game. Can you remember the specific moment when you realised, “Oh, we’re actually making this properly now”?

It was more of a backstage burn than a triumphant moment. We were still developing the demo at this point, but it had been scrapped and restarted several times since we didn’t like how it was turning out. Around fall of 2025 was when it really started dawning on us that we would be making something proper. The demo was being updated daily, and at this point we had decent-looking placeholder sprites as well as a good chunk of the rooms finished and playable. Above all else, it was through daily reinforcement and our own efforts that we realised we were making something larger than ourselves. It’s the way we believed it had to be that way first that it eventually manifested into exactly that!

Your list of inspirations jumps wildly from Silent Hill and SIGNALIS to Ace Attorney, Undertale, OMORI, Your Turn To Die and Doki Doki Literature Club. What’s the strangest combination of influences that ended up producing a single scene or mechanic in Nightmere?

One of our favourite parts in the demo is the final third act. All those games have their own beautiful atmosphere and we knew we shouldn’t go and try to replicate them, but rather be inspired by how they approached their game and what made it work so well. We tried doing that in the final parts of the demo where you play as the killer. That sequence had a weird, dream-like feel to it that was inspired by OMORI’s Black Space and the Otherworld from Silent Hill in terms of how it was supposed to make you feel. The storytelling through that entire last section felt very Undertale and SIGNALIS-like in retrospect, so there are definitely many more subconscious influences in other scenes, I’m sure. It’s hard not to be inspired by beautiful things.

The game asks players to investigate evidence and make decisions rather than simply watch its mystery unfold. When you’re writing a mystery for an interactive game, how do you hide enough information to make discovery satisfying without hiding so much that the player feels cheated?

This was one of the biggest problems that we faced when writing the demo. In all honesty, although the reception was overwhelmingly positive, we would be lying if we said there weren’t many people who said it felt too easy. Yet, at the same time, many said it was too difficult. When writing a mystery, especially for a game, you can’t focus on trying to please everyone. What helped us was constantly reiterating within our small team and trusting our intuition with it, since mysteries can easily be ruined by trying to incorporate too much feedback.

You cancelled the original Kickstarter and came back with a substantially reworked campaign rather than simply pushing ahead with something you weren’t happy with. What did that first attempt teach you that materially changed Nightmere or the way you’re approaching its development?

That first attempt was really a blessing in disguise. As an artist, you pay a lot of attention to the little details and things that you spent hours on, whether it be a game, its music or the art you put out into the world. But not everyone is an artist, and people are often too busy to pay attention to every aspect of your product. The same was true for our first attempt. What we learned from the staggered growth of the first Kickstarter was, “How do we convey neatly what our story is to others, and how is it important?” You’ll definitely see we doubled down on our themes and one-line descriptions in the new, current Kickstarter, which is doing fantastic so far.

The project has also evolved from the earlier three-act structure into Nightmere I and Nightmere II as paid releases. Was that mainly a practical production decision, or did the story itself start demanding a different structure?

Production is always a major factor whenever approaching how to build a project, whether big or small. After the first launch, we went back to the drawing board and thought about what we should change while we still had enough time to pivot. It became apparent to us that three acts, while our most ideal structure, is a big promise to ourselves and all of our fans and supporters. The story was not substantially changed, however, and we’re now very committed to the two-part structure. We really do believe what we have here is something special.

Nightmere very deliberately states that its artwork wasn’t made with generative AI. For a game where the handmade visual identity is such a large part of its personality, what does creating the artwork yourselves give the game that you think would otherwise be lost?

I think our team feels very strongly about our stance on generative AI replacing art. When one of our members visited Old Quebec a few weeks ago, they absolutely adored strolling down the streets and appreciating the atmosphere created by the old-timey European architecture and the buzz of the nightlife around them. The farther they walked along the cobblestone pathways, however, past the intimate chatter of pedestrians and the cosy architecture, over and over again there would be instances of signage that looked practically alien. Even the images in restaurant menus were AI generated too. How superficial was it that AI-generated images were showing up in a place as earnest as this? Many people would say, “That’s just how it is now.” We can’t stand for that.

All of us firmly believe that what gives us autonomy as human beings is the ability to create. To start with nothing and build your way up, working with what you’ve got even in the most inconvenient circumstances, is nothing short of beautiful. So then, what would the input of AI provide? If the goal is to put in as little effort as possible to get the most superficial results when using AI, then it has no place in our workplace. We want to put 100% of ourselves into what we create. In a world that’s slowly losing its humanity, the last thing it needs is something that spreads more inhumane inauthenticity.

Nightmere is set in 1991, which is a wonderfully inconvenient period for solving mysteries because you can’t just pull a smartphone out of your pocket. What is one piece of obsolete 1991 technology, culture or everyday life that you’ve particularly enjoyed working into the game?

I’ve always been fascinated by more retro aesthetics and technology. We’re hoping to do the early nineties justice through our game, and that means looking into everything from the culture to the technology. One thing I’d really like to incorporate well is the use of cafe diners that were very prominent in these isolated towns. If you watch a lot of 90s TV, and I know I do, you’ll notice that pretty much every other episode will have the characters hopping into one kind of diner or another. The atmosphere of these shows is something I feel is so unique to its time and something I hope to recreate in Nightmere. We’re also seeing the rise of a lot of cool technology around this time too, which will definitely be seen in the game.

What’s the most unusual thing on your desk right now? If possible, we’d love a photo of it too!

This really, really cool duck.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Absolutely! We’re building something special here, and we know Nightmere has wonderful potential to realise. However, this isn’t because it just happened to be so. It started as a simple, fun idea that took itself seriously only when we began to take it seriously and follow our passions. We’d like to thank all our supporters for also believing in the project, which can only make it better. Make something wonderful, and support wonderful things!

We would like to thank Cupkisu Studios for taking the time to answer our questions, and Jayson Napolitano for arranging the interview. Nightmere I is currently in development for PC, with a playable demo available through Steam and its successfully funded Kickstarter campaign continuing until October 27. Anyone intrigued by its mixture of detective work, psychological horror and lovingly handmade artwork can experience the opening chapter for themselves while keeping an eye on the project’s continuing development.