Niru Fekri-Arnold

(He/Him)

Niru’s breakthrough project is the game Cursed Words.

Obsessed with all forms of creative media since he was a kid, Niru cites Double Fine’s Amnesia Fortnight series as the thing that made him want to be a game developer. Remembering how it was the first time he had seen what making a game actually looked like, rather than just understanding the end result, he says it humanized the creative process that went into games and enabled him to imagine making them himself.

Having had his early imagination sparked by the world of games Niru went on to a career in the immersive and VR space, working with likes of The National Theatre and NASA, while also participating in international game jams. All this experience then led the games developer and his cousin to take the plunge and open the studio Buried Thing which just two years later has produced his breakthrough project, a bizarre puzzle game disguised as a word game called Cursed Words.

In his own words…

“We’re firmly of the mind that every idea can be made into something brilliant, and that it’s always worth trying something quickly, killing your darlings, and coming out stronger for having explored something risky…

“So much of what our work tries to be is an exploration of emergent ideas. We are obsessed with epiphany – having a player suddenly realise something that totally redefines the world they thought they were in. We love watching people make a revelation that lets them go back and say to themselves “so that must mean I can do this” and see they are able to apply a new mind to the game they’ve been inhabiting. Rabbit holes of discovery are the most exciting things for us to make.”