DarkLab Games
DarkLab Games is an independent studio run by its two co-founders, Ashish Mittal and Sarthak Aggarwal — making horror, action and arcade games that are built to be finished rather than farmed.
- Founded
- 2024
- Based in
- India
- Size
- Two co-founders
- Shipped
- 4 games
The lab makes games about attention — who has yours, and who is paying it to you.
DarkLab started in horror and never fully left. The Museum puts a camera in your hands and something patient in the hallway. I Like You gives you a list of chores and quietly changes who else is in the house. Watch His Step flips it — now you are the one watching, and a man with a phone is walking into an open manhole.
Void Strike is the odd one out and the point is the same. Its weapons aim themselves so that your attention has somewhere better to go: the field, the gaps, the moment before the red lines land.
Four games, three genres, one habit — find the single thing a game is actually about, then remove everything else until that thing has room.
Building the next one
Two co-founders, one lab
DarkLab Games is run by two people who split the work down the middle — one deciding what a game is about, one making sure it actually ships.
Ashish Mittal
Co-founder · Design & directionAshish leads design and direction at DarkLab — the person deciding what a game is actually about before a single system gets built. He drove the studio's horror work, from the camcorder in The Museum to the quiet wrongness of I Like You. He would rather ship fifteen minutes that land than fifteen hours that do not.
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Sarthak Aggarwal
Co-founder · Engineering & productionSarthak handles engineering and production — turning the one-line idea into something that runs, on the platforms players are actually on. He keeps the build honest: scope cut early, releases out in public, feedback read and acted on. Four titles are out because someone kept saying the word ship.
Connect on LinkedInHow a game gets made here
One idea, stated in a sentence
Every project begins as a single line. “You are not the man walking — you are the world.” “Your guns aim themselves.” If it does not survive being said out loud, it does not get built.
Everything that is not that idea goes
Features get removed until only the sentence is left standing. It is why a DarkLab game is short, and why the short version is the good version.
Out in public, free, early
Games go up on itch.io where strangers can be honest about them. Comments and ratings shape what gets fixed and what gets made next.
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