One game designer. AI in every gap. A studio of one.
RavenByte is the independent mobile game studio of Keykan Sönmez. After starting at Peak Games and Wooga, he co-founded NanoTribe, which Zynga acquired in 2022. Now he is building again: one person working with AI, making games for iOS and Android. The whole build is documented in public in Offscreen.
Chess Quest
Working titleThe studio's first game: a new take on chess, made for mobile.
- CasualChess made casual and easy to pick up
- Bite-sizedQuick, fast games that fit a few spare minutes
- FreshNew board layouts and obstacles that keep chess interesting
- ModernA new style of chess for how people play today
- PlatformiOS and Android
- StatusIn development
One person. The whole pipeline.
Every rule and level from one designer
Rules, difficulty and levels are designed and play-tested by hand, then locked as written decisions the rest of the work follows.
Claude Code writes the software
The game, the studio's tools and an automated test suite are built with Claude Code. RavenByte started with no coding background; AI closes the gap from design to working build.
The Source, the studio's research base
A structured knowledge base of mobile market data, benchmarks and design records, so decisions are argued from evidence and not from instinct alone.
Behind the studio
Keykan Sönmez started in games at Peak Games in 2011, then moved to Berlin to join Wooga. In 2017 he co-founded NanoTribe, the studio behind Arrow Fest, Cashier 3D and Bus Jam. Zynga acquired NanoTribe in 2022.
RavenByte is what came next: a direct test of what one designer can build when AI fills every gap.
Selected titles: Diamond Dash, Head Ball 2, Cashier 3D, Arrow Fest and Bus Jam.
The full story at keykan.com