Czech startup Atty Games turns a viral tweet into a Steam game

A married couple, Eva and Lukáš Navrátil, from near Znojmo in Moravia, spent five years developing the video game Scarlet Deer Inn with uniquely embroidered graphics — and have finally released it on Steam. Three years ago, a post showing off their unusual technique racked up 26 million views and went around the world; now the game is ready to bring in its first sales.

Eva and Lukáš are partners not just in life but in business too — together they founded the studio Atty Games. Their trademark is that they don’t draw the game’s graphics on a computer, they literally embroider them. That doesn’t mean hand-stitching every single frame, of course — with the profits from their previous project, the couple bought a dedicated embroidery machine. “You prepare the template on a computer, and the machine embroiders it for you,” Eva Navrátilová explains the technique behind a game with a truly one-of-a-kind visual style.

It was this approach that made the studio famous long before launch: a viral tweet showing the process racked up over a quarter of a million likes and 36,000 reposts, and even Japanese media wrote about the game. The creators of the legendary Prince of Persia and Fallout expressed interest in the project.

Despite all the buzz, the couple admit they’re nervous about the actual launch: likes on social media are one thing, sales are quite another. Still, Atty Games already has some solid business wins to show: the studio found a publisher to enter the lucrative Chinese market, and more than 100,000 people added Scarlet Deer Inn to their Steam wishlist even before release — a solid figure for a project of this scale.

The game, inspired by The Witcher, Miyazaki films and a Slavic atmosphere, costs around 450 crowns on Steam and is available in Czech, Japanese and Chinese, among other languages. The developers later plan to release console versions as well, expanding the audience and commercial potential of their unusual creation.