The world premiere trailer for Into the Unwell drew eyes at Summer Game Fest 2025 for its rubberhose art style, chaotic roguelike gameplay, and themes of mental health and dealing with inner turmoil. Into the Unwell is the first game developed by She Was Such A Good Horse, a Sweden-based studio founded in 2021.
The Best War Games recently spoke to She Was Such A Good Horse co-founder and creative director Mårten Stockhaus about the origins of this curiously-named studio. We also spoke about what makes the Malmö game scene special, the inspirations and design of Into the Unwell, what we can expect from Into the Unwell in Early Access, and more. The following transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
She Was Such A Good Horse & The Malmö Game Scene
The Best War Games: Where did the name for the studio come from? "She Was Such A Good Horse." Is there a real-life "she"?
"Sadly, or a good thing I guess, it's not a real horse. The name is funnier than the story, but I'll tell it anyway. When we started the studio, we wanted to have a name, and I think it's human nature to think of something that you're familiar with. Like other studio names, we started coming up with cool names. I was like, 'I don't want our studio name to be cool.' You know, Blizzard is very cool. There's nothing wrong with those names, but they're saying something cool. And I was like, 'maybe we should have something that is sad.' Then I came up with She Was Such A Good Horse, which everyone said, "that's too long for a name." But that's the fun part, it's too long and it's not a studio name, and it tells the story of this horse, "she was such a good horse." Eventually everyone agreed that's actually true. But I wish there was a horse; it would have made for a better answer."
The Best War Games: How did all of the co-founders of She Was Such A Good Horse meet? I know you all came from the Malmö games scene, and I am curious about how that looks as well. But how did you all meet?
"Daniel, one of the co-founders, and I actually studied together back in the day. We always wanted to make a game studio together. I think it was 2020 or so that Daniel came to me, we had both been in the game industry, and we've worked at Ubisoft together and such. He was like, now it's time, it's time to finally start that studio we've been talking about for so long. He had some people in mind: me, Daniel, Mathias, Felix, and Måns, and then we sat down over beers and said we should start a studio. The five of us, we have all the competence that we need, we all have the same idea of how a studio should operate, and we all had vague interest in the same games. We got along really well, and we agreed that, yeah, we should join in. Then in 2021, we finally started the studio, so that's kind of how it all started: with me and Daniel talking about it, then everyone else following after."
The Best War Games: So there were conversations during 2020, but then it was formally founded in 2021. Was that during the height of COVID for you guys? Were there any challenges with founding a studio during that tumultuous time?
"Yes, we had already started working from home when we started setting up the studio, so we were all prepared for it already. I worked at Paradox Interactive at the time, and I was working from home. Then when we started the studio we were like, 'how is this going to work, working from home?' But it was easier because we had already prepared for it in a way. Then we eventually got an office, we could sit together, and that was awesome."
The Best War Games: That changes everything, doesn't it?
"For sure, that was really fun. I think the COVID times mostly had drawbacks, but there were some benefits to it. One of the benefits was that we had more time to sit and think, and start a studio."
The Best War Games: You mentioned Paradox, and you've also worked at Massive Entertainment. How would you say the experience of making games is different at a large studio like that vs. A very small studio like She Was Such A Good Horse?
"I think the main difference between working on a large game and a smaller game like this is that you can do way more of whatever you want, which makes a world of difference. For instance, when I worked at Massive, you couldn't really go out of the box that much. You have to be inside that box all the time. The box can be really important for those kinds of games – if you're working on an Assassin's Creed game, it has to feel like an Assassin's Creed game. I get that, it can be really cool to be a part of that really huge process, and I have nothing bad to say about it. But for me, in our own game, we can just put anything, and the box can be whatever we want. If you're a creative person, it's a dream come true to do what we do."
The Best War Games: She Was Such A Good Horse was founded by veterans from all over the Malmö games scene. I was wondering if you could describe what makes that special and how it has molded you as a game creator?
"I think Malmö is a perfect size city, at least for many of us who live here. It's Sweden's third-largest city, so it's not super large in any stretch of the imagination. But it has everything that you need and still feels like a city. I think it's very good for the game industry, where we are all in this small city–I'm not entirely sure, but last time I heard something around 2,000 developers. That's quite a lot of developers for a city of this size, but it still feels like everyone knows everyone. Even if I don't know everyone personally, I can recognize everyone. We have this organization called Game Habitat, and they are a game development organization. They have a building – we are not in that building – where studios can rent spaces just for game devs. They also host parties and events. We go there all the time, we know everyone there, so the area is really good at keeping the community tight. I think that's important for the Malmö game scene. I think the Malmö game scene is really a bunch of talented, fun people, and I'm just happy to be here. I spent a year at Ubisoft too, which was really cool, but I much prefer Malmö."
Delving Into The Unwell – Inspirations & Influences
The Best War Games: I am curious about the influences behind Into the Unwell's gameplay, specifically. Into the Unwell is a roguelike and there are a couple of games that I immediately thought of, but I am curious if there are any particular inspirations that the team drew from during development?
"For games, we looked at the major roguelike games at the time. Back then, we obviously played Hades a lot, and I think Hades is absolutely one of the most brilliant roguelikes. We also looked at Risk of Rain 2. We thought it was really cool to have this third-person angle camera, and we also want a third-person in our roguelike. One of the games I brought up early on in development was Alice: Madness Returns. I kind of wanted some of that feeling for the gameplay, for the platforming and combat and so on, and I wanted the game to be somewhat in that vein as well. I know a lot of people online have referenced old PS2 games, and that's also very much true. We all grew up with those games, so they all seem to be included somehow, like Jak and Daxter."
The Best War Games: So Into the Unwell has darker themes to its story and characters, and I'm interested in what made the team take the game's tone in this direction. It's an interesting contrast of colorful, cartoony characters dealing with self-destructive tendencies and mental health. What made the team bring it in this direction – was it like the studio's name? Where, instead of a "cool" name, you wanted to go with something sad to stand out?
"You're not totally wrong! I often tend to go there, I often tend to go to contrasts. Like in roguelikes, what is your main goal? Your main goal is to basically break the game and become as strong as possible, find synergies. Then you immediately go to superheroes or big cool weapons. And then I ask the developers for things that may be, in other games, considered drawbacks or debuffs. Can we go in that direction? We initially thought it would be very cool to add, let's say, we have substances instead of magic. You drink beer and become strong. We thought that was interesting from a creative perspective. We thought it was cool to play around with those things. I know it's not an easy subject, we obviously don't want to be judgmental or in any way be offensive or abusive or supportive of this. We're not celebrating it, but we're including it because it's also a part of life. We all feel sad sometimes, we all feel unwell, and that's OK."
The Best War Games: The classic cartoon art style drew me to Into the Unwell when it was announced earlier this year. But you typically see this rubberhose art style in 2D animation rather than 3D animation. What were the challenges of rendering these characters in 3D and maintaining that art style? Sometimes you see games go for that rubberhose, classic cartoon style in 3D, and it doesn't come out well, but Into the Unwell actually does pull it off.
"Around the time we started talking about this idea of these heavily-flawed characters coming along, Felix discussed the art style for this, and he was very interested in having a modernized rubberhose feel to it. It was like if rubberhose never died out and continued, so that's what we were going for. It keeps a lot of the rules of rubberhose, but evolved. 3D was not a thing at the time, for instance. There was a lot of iteration with him (Felix) and Daniel, another co-founder and animation director. They've just done so much cool stuff with the rigs and animations that we fell in love with."
The Best War Games: What inspired the team to go with a cat as the main character?
"The cat was not the first character we created. It was actually the second–the first character we created was Golden Nugget. We thought it was really cool to have a chicken character, and the second character was created before we had really figured out the angle of it. In his (Golden Nugget) first concept, he's not even hurt. In the game now, he's a gambling addict, he's lost an arm and a leg, he has one eye, and he has stitches up his body. He's lost everything, and in his first concept he didn't have that. Then the second character we made was Charcat. He was probably a bit inspired by my makeup as well, with the running [laughs].
He's addicted to alcohol and he's drinking all the time, which you can see in the trailer, probably depression and other issues. We thought a cat had more of the feel and the tone that we were going for, probably because he was our second character, so he became the posterboy. Specifically why we chose a cat, I don't actually remember, but we all love cats and I have a cat – a lot of us have cats. So probably because we love cats.
The Best War Games: I've been playing a little bit of the closed beta, and there's one character who is sticking in my mind. I keep running into him, and I don't know what his deal is. So I'm curious, what's the deal with Pedro? Who is this guy? Why does he just keep turning up being creepy?
"I'm glad you asked this question. Pedro is our favorite character. That's why he's everywhere, and we go through a lot of effort just to make sure he's everywhere. Every trailer we've released, he's there. We joke that around the office we should have Pedro cut-outs, like real size, and just hide him in places like out in the world. The origin of him is actually Balder, and he has this really creative eye for creating characters. He has created a lot of them like Beer Lad and Pedro. We actually love Pedro so much. He's supposed to have black fur but he shaves, and that's why he's pink. He has band-aids all over because he cuts himself while shaving. Then he just stands and he peeks. He's a peeker, and we don't know why. Well, we have ideas floating around the office, but all we know right now is that he's peeping a lot."
Into The Unwell Development Timeline & Early Access Launch
The Best War Games: Into the Unwell entered its closed beta a few weeks ago, and I can't wait to see what's next. Do you have any hints about what's coming after the Earl of Axes?
"Yes, in the trailer you can actually see some hints at the next segment of the world. The world and enemies and everything is a metaphor. It's not necessarily super important that the player understands what our intentions are. I think it's whatever they feel is most accurate. In the first world, when we created it, one of the pillars was consumerism. We just consume so many things and throw them away and it's trash, so that's why we have junk food and things for enemies that are fitting. The world is a garbage world. In the second world, the inspiration is how we fake a lot of things in society. We thought, what if the second world is all these influencers who go to the beach and they have this perfect angle where they're alone on the beach, but there's hundreds of people there, if you know what I mean.
That's kind of the angle for the second area. Those small little things we throw out there can be a huge inspiration for everything from the environment that we build, the enemies we put into them, what kind of hazards we can add or what events fit–it's so helpful to have those little ideas. As I mentioned earlier when we talked about the box, that box is very open. You can put a lot of things in that box. That's also been very helpful in creating this game; it's so forgiving that we can put so many things in there. Like a year ago, Balder was creating an area and said, "I can't come up with a good prop to put in places, like a small area you can jump up." And then I was like, "do you remember pogs?" Pogs are cool, they're round, you can put them anywhere to perfectly set up jumping. Then he created a bunch of pogs and stuff like that is so cool, where we can take things from our childhood or things that we like and put it in there, and it just kind of fits."
The Best War Games: Do you know when the game will launch into Early Access, and do you have a timeline or an expectation of how long the Early Access period might last?
"Nothing is set in stone, and we are discussing the timeline right now. We are aiming for either late this year or early next year. For full release, it's all depends on how the Early Access goes. If they come up with zero issues, then we can go pretty fast. The second segment, or second world, is already in the game, though it could use some more polish. But we do aim to have a third world and a third boss for 1.0, so hopefully that will be released during Early Access – the full run."
[END]
Into the Unwell
- Developer(s)
- She Was Such A Good Horse
