Cassettra is Sunserif's own indie game studio. We're including it because it's the build that pushed our dark-screen craft the hardest, and because most studios don't get to show what they ship for themselves at the same level as what they ship for clients. Cassette for the analog warmth; spectra for the full color range a single source can throw.
Cassettra is the only project in this portfolio that didn't start with a brief. It started with a question: what does the cyberpunk aesthetic look like when it's used by someone who actually lives it? The answer was 14 prototypes, a design system that became the reference point for everything we built in the dark-screen register after — and a studio that named itself out of the system it was working in.
The case study below is what would have been a brief if there'd been a brief. Plus the two things a gaming-press writer can actually use.
The design system is restraint applied to high-saturation. Magenta and cyan are the only colors — and the magenta only ever fires when something is being asked of the user. 1px purple-tinted borders create a HUD grid that reads as game UI without becoming a game UI cliché.
Magenta at no more than 10–15% surface area, cyan as the secondary, a purple-tinted dark border that does most of the structural lift. Magenta only ever fires when something is being asked of the user.
A geometric sans for display (precision). A monospace for system labels (utility). An editorial italic for the moments a real person is saying something. The italic is the only serif in the whole system.
Our own pipeline is documented internally and absent externally — by design. The studio's output is what readers see. The workflow is what readers don't have to care about.
No other design studio case study lets you play the thing. This one does. A 30-second vertical slice of the studio's lead title — title screen, first loop, mobile-responsive — embedded directly on the page. One featured demo beats five linked external builds.
The slice runs in any modern browser, on desktop and mobile, without an install. It's the studio showing — not telling — what the game is.
Games press has a published spec for press kits — one page with studio bio, game sheets, logos at every size, screenshots, boilerplate credits. Most indie studios have a kit somewhere, hidden, often broken. The Cassettra case study has the kit inline, in the standard format, with a real download. The button below is the only one on the case study that promises a file — and the file works.
It's two features that no normal brand case study has. Together they say: this studio understands how its category works. A writer covering Cassettra can walk away from the page with everything they need — image assets at every size, a fact sheet they can paste, and a 30-second loop of the game they're writing about.
Visible iteration arc — not a single-direction sprint. Each prototype tests one design hypothesis. All preserved on the site as proof the system wasn't picked from a moodboard.
The brief itself reads as the brand document, published on the site. Unusual posture — readers can see how the studio thinks about its own work.
Multi-resolution favicon, social card image, every share-context covered without re-export.
Star Hamza, Override Protocol, Herald: Press & Power, Parallax Shift, StarNoir — each scaffolded as a real portfolio entry rather than a "coming soon" pile.
| Layer | State |
|---|---|
| Brand system · 14 prototypes | shipped |
| Design brief site | live |
| Embedded playable fragment · Star Hamza | running |
| Downloadable press kit | assembled |
| Star Hamza · App Store build | in flight |
| Other 4 game projects | concept |
14 prototypes. No brief — the studio formed around the design system, not the other way around. The dark-screen work we ship now traces back to it.
— Sunserif · on Cassettra