About

Quirkigami is a one-person game studio in New York. The person is me, Francesco Antolini.

I spent two decades directing and designing big games — Prince of Persia on PSP, Assassin’s Creed missions at Ubisoft, Just Cause 3 and 4 at Avalanche Studios, then Amazon Games. When Amazon shut down its AAA effort in 2026, I stopped directing big teams and started finishing my own game. Alone, this time. It turns out I missed the craft more than the org chart.

The Beast Awoke To Eat Your Darlings (BATEYD) is the first Quirkigami game: a horror game you outsmart, not survive. Everything in its nightmares follows rules you can learn — and it’s terrifying anyway, mostly in broad daylight. It’s also a story about a young woman who woke from a coma with two years missing, and what it costs to remember them.

I also make music. The soundtrack is composed and performed live on Moog synthesizers and Elektron machines, and it moves from ambient to techno by way of synthwave and generative music. Some of it is already up: Hopping into a dream if you want the synthwave, Homage if you want the energy.