Studio
A team of players, making the games we wanted to play
Broken Umbrella Games is small, independent, and in no hurry. We build calm games that run on ordinary hardware and ask nothing of you beyond your attention — and only for as long as you feel like giving it.
Why we started
We came to this as players first. The games we kept reaching for were the small ones — quick to open, easy to put down, not built to extract anything from us. The games we kept uninstalling were the ones that treated our time as a resource to be harvested.
So the studio exists to make more of the first kind. Nothing here is designed to be sticky. If you play for ten minutes and close it, the game worked.
What the name means
A broken umbrella still keeps most of the rain off. It is the useful, unglamorous thing you actually have on you, rather than the perfect thing you left at home.
That is roughly our attitude to scope. We would rather ship a small game that works and keep improving it than hold back a large one until it is flawless. Stewry went out with five floors and a hardcoded opening stretch. It is better now than it was, and it will be better again.
How we work
In public, mostly. Design decisions and the compromises behind them go in the devlog — including the ones that did not work out. It keeps us honest, and it is more interesting than a changelog.
Roadmaps here are genuinely provisional. When players tell us which of four planned features they actually want, the order changes. That is the whole advantage of being this small.
On privacy, specifically
Our games do not require an account, and they do not track you. Progress and settings sync anonymously; the link between that data and your device is severed when you uninstall. We do not sell data, and we do not build advertising profiles.
This is not a marketing position we could quietly drop later — it is in the architecture. The games were built without an identity layer, so there is no switch to flip. The privacy policy and the data deletion process spell out the details.
Frequently asked
- Who is Broken Umbrella Games?
- Broken Umbrella Games is a small independent game studio founded by Afzaal Ahmad Zeeshan. It makes calm, cross-platform games for desktop and mobile that require no account and collect no tracking data.
- What games has Broken Umbrella Games made?
- Its first release is Stewry — Infinite Runner, a cross-platform infinite runner available on the Microsoft Store and itch.io for Windows, Linux and Android. Sketchy Friends, a social drawing game for Android and iOS, is in development.
- What engine does Broken Umbrella Games use?
- Unity. The games use low-poly 3D art and a light footprint so the frame rate holds on modest hardware.
- Do Broken Umbrella Games track players?
- No. The games contain no advertising SDKs and do no cross-app tracking. Progress syncs against an anonymous identifier that is not linked to your identity, and nothing is sold on.
- Where can I download their games?
- Stewry is on the Microsoft Store for Windows and on itch.io for Windows and Linux, where it is pay-what-you-want. Links are on each game page.
- How do I contact Broken Umbrella Games?
- Email contact@brokenumbrellagames.com, or use the contact page at https://brokenumbrellagames.com/contact/. Press enquiries go to the same address, and a press kit is published at https://brokenumbrellagames.com/press/.