Giant white marble figures rise from the sea, perform a brief symbolic dance, and walk back under.
A one-person studio making a weird art-game on factory-automation foundations. No name yet. No trailer. Just a shape, and a feeling we are building toward.
Fig. 00 — Your plastic heaven?
A factory for feelings you would rather not have.
It is an art-game built on factory-automation foundations — belts, machines, optimization, the quiet satisfaction of a system that finally runs.
Underneath the tidy logistics is the thing the logistics are trying not to look at: pollution, a warming world, the slow industrial undoing of something that was alive. The game uses absurdity as a protective lens — comedy held up to genuine bleakness so you can keep looking without flinching or drowning. Warm, not nihilistic. Funny, but about something.
- Status — In development
- Announcement — Not yet
- Working title — No name yet
- Foundations — Factory automation
- Target window — 2027-2029
No store page. No trailer. No screenshots worth showing yet. When there is something real, it appears here and on YouTube — not before.
Sorry, no image here yet – will be added later
One person. Several lifetimes. Finally in the same room.
I got my first home computer in 1984 and quickly learned to make it obey. In 1987, at eleven, I finished a game and tried to publish it. It did not work out — the first of many useful failures.
I went to the University of Jyväskylä to study a combination of mathematics and computing, and somewhere around 1995 I understood that what I actually wanted was art. I taught myself 2D and 3D graphics and how to make music on synthesizers; later I published a collection of poetry. Then I graduated in 1999 and did the sensible thing — a long, capable career in software, data, and AI.
In 2025 I finally admitted the obvious: that by making my own games I could put the two halves of myself in the same room — the engineer and the artist, the kid and the professional. I left the day job and started Ape Matrix Labs, a one-person studio in Helsinki, to pursue the creative dreams I had been postponing since I was eleven.
Teemu Lähteenmäki — founder, Ape Matrix Labs
- Founder — Teemu Lähteenmäki
- Founded — 2025, Helsinki
- Background — software, data, AI, art
- First game attempt — 1987, age 11
Devlog
Irregular dispatches. Most lead somewhere — usually a new video.
Attending Gamescom 2026
This time just watching and making contacts. Hopefully later I have my own game in the Indie section.
The channel opens
First video is up — “Trying to make games again after 40 years”. More to follow as there is more to show.
Now fully into games
One person, one machine, and an extremely long to-do list. After thirty-odd years of detour, the creative work starts in earnest. Lots of technologies and game design topics to learn, and many game ideas to assess.
Ape Matrix Labs begins
The studio is founded in Helsinki. First months go by finalizing previous consulting engagements.