About Static Owl
A small studio making finished games with intention.
Mara Voss
Static Owl Games is run by Mara Voss, a developer based in Bristol. She studied Computer Science at the University of Bristol and spent four years as a gameplay programmer at a mid-size UK studio, shipping two commercial titles and learning what works—and what doesn't—in team development at scale.
In 2019, she stepped away to make smaller, more personal work full-time. Static Owl Games was built to ship games that wouldn't exist in a production pipeline: strange, focused, uncompromised by committee. It's also built to take contract and commission work from developers and publishers who want someone who can actually finish things.
Recognition
Real work gets noticed.
- Marrow Keep nominated for 'Best Debut' at UK Games Fest 2023
- Featured on itch.io's front page during its jam-to-launch run
- Covered in Rock Paper Shotgun's roundup of UK indie roguelikes
None of this happened by accident. It happened because the work was finished, polished, and worth writing about.
Tools & Craft
Design & Systems
Narrative design. Systems design. Mechanical iteration. The invisible architecture that makes a game feel right to play.
Art & Audio
Pixel art. Sprite animation. Audio implementation and integration. Everything that makes a game look and sound like itself.
Engines
Godot, GameMaker, Unity. Each has a job. Each is used for what it's good at.
Production
Aseprite for pixel work. FMOD for audio. Git for version control. The discipline to ship.
This isn't a list of software. It's evidence that a game can go from concept through to a shipped, polished build with one person driving it. Or collaborating with your team to drive it.
Design Philosophy
Games should be handcrafted, not templated. Scope should stay small so quality stays high. And every mechanic should serve the emotional core of the game.
That last point matters. In Marrow Keep, permadeath was the first draft. Brutal, unforgiving, true to dungeon-crawler tradition. But playtesting showed us something: players weren't learning from failure. They were just frustrated. So we softened it—kept the weight of loss, removed the wall. The mechanic now serves what the game actually does: make you feel like you're getting better at surviving.
That's craft. Not following the template. Listening to what the game needs, then building it.
Static Owl Games is open for contract work, collaboration, and commission. We ship finished games.
Let's talk