Chen Baraker is the founder and CEO of Ayamuro Studios, an independent game studio founded in 2025. Fascinated by programming from a young age, Baraker focuses on developing original games built around distinctive gameplay mechanics and technical problem-solving.
His current project is MoveMe, a two-to-four-player online co-op climbing game in development for Steam. The game introduces an unconventional control system in which each player’s keyboard controls their partner’s character, while their partner controls theirs. Communication and coordination are central to the experience.
MoveMe features a custom technical implementation designed to make its central mechanic feel seamless. Rather than transmitting keyboard inputs between players, the game swaps cameras and character models and teleports the characters around a ring, making the exchange feel instantaneous. Development began in February 2026, with Baraker creating the game entirely on his own.
Beyond MoveMe, Baraker is developing two additional games. One is a fast-paced roguelike shooter being made in collaboration with a friend. The other is a solo-developed open-world action game built around a large-scale sandbox experience. These projects represent his ongoing work across different genres and approaches to game design.
Through Ayamuro Studios, Baraker is building a portfolio of original games while remaining directly involved in their development. His work combines a longstanding interest in code with the practical challenges of designing and building interactive experiences from the ground up. His long-term goal is to build a studio in the tradition of the great game makers, the way Valve did, one that pushes the gaming industry forward instead of following it.
MoveMe is currently listed on Steam as coming soon, with no release date announced. More information is available at playmoveme.com.
What is your typical day, and how do you make it productive?
Most of my time goes into building games and solving problems. I focus on what is blocking progress, work through it, and test the result. I try to measure progress by what actually works, not by how busy I was.
How do you bring ideas to life?
I start with the core mechanic and figure out how to make it work. MoveMe is a good example. The idea is simple: your keyboard moves your friend’s character, and theirs moves yours. Making that feel instant without sending keyboard inputs between players required a different technical solution. Once the core idea works, you can build the rest around it.
What’s one trend that excites you?
I’m interested in what independent developers can build with modern tools. A small operation can take on technically ambitious projects without needing a huge organization behind it. I think there is a lot of room for games that stand out because of their mechanics rather than their size.
What is one habit that helps you be productive?
I break large problems into smaller ones that I can actually solve and test. It is easier to make progress when the next step is clear. I would rather get one important thing working than have ten things half-finished.
What advice would you give your younger self?
Start building earlier, and finish what you start. Half-finished projects teach you a lot less than finished ones. Getting MoveMe all the way to its own Steam page taught me things no unfinished project could.
Tell us something you believe almost nobody agrees with you.
I believe a tiny studio can still change the gaming industry. A lot of people think that era is over, and that real change only comes from giant companies with huge budgets. I don’t buy it. The studios that changed games, like Valve, started small and took risks bigger companies wouldn’t. That’s what I want Ayamuro to be.
What is the one thing you repeatedly do and recommend everyone else do?
Turn ideas into something you can test. You can debate an idea forever, but a working prototype shows you what is actually interesting and what isn’t. Reality is a much better filter than imagination alone.
When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do?
I stop and pick one thing. When everything feels urgent at once, nothing gets done. So I ask what is actually blocking the game right now, fix that, and let the rest wait.
What is one strategy that has helped you grow your business or advance in your career?
I focus on what makes a game different instead of trying to compete with everything at once. MoveMe has a clear central mechanic that people can understand quickly, but implementing it requires real technical work. That gives the project a clear direction and helps me decide which features belong in it.
What is one failure in your career, how did you overcome it, and what lessons did you take away from it?
The hardest part of MoveMe wasn’t the swap itself. It was everything the swap broke. Almost every system in a game quietly assumes that your body is you. Once your camera follows your friend’s body, that stops being true. Every body is now tied to two people: the one moving it and the one watching through it. So every basic system, even ones you never think about, became a problem to solve. Sound came from the wrong place because the audio listener sat on the wrong body. Voice chat had to come from the right person, not the right body. Name tags and colors pointed at the wrong player. Every fix showed me another system making the same assumption.
I got through it by going system by system and asking one question every time: should this follow the body, the person watching it, or the person controlling it? Once I asked that question first, the bugs got much easier to fix.
The lesson: when you change one core rule, expect it to touch everything. Getting the idea working was the easy part. Making it feel right took most of the project.
What is one business idea you’re willing to give away to our readers?
One idea is a lightweight playtesting service for independent game developers. Players would opt in to share privacy-conscious gameplay data, and the service would show developers where people get stuck, abandon a session, or struggle to understand a mechanic. Instead of guessing which part of a game is confusing, developers could use real playtest evidence to decide what to fix.
What is one piece of software that helps you be productive? How do you use it?
MoveMe is built in Unity, and my other two games are in Unreal Engine. Unity is where most of my day happens: building levels, testing multiplayer, and fixing whatever the last playtest broke. I’d rather pick the engine that fits the project than force one engine onto everything.
What is the best $100 you recently spent?
The $100 Steam Direct fee to put MoveMe on Steam. Seeing my first game with its own store page on Steam was a really good feeling. People could wishlist it, and it stopped being a project on my hard drive. I can’t wait to have many more up there.
Do you have a favorite book or podcast from which you’ve received much value?
How To Market A Game by Chris Zukowski. It’s a blog and YouTube channel about selling indie games on Steam, and I love it. What stuck with me: wishlists before launch matter a lot, and he warns that most indie multiplayer games struggle because they need a lot of players online to stay alive. That made me think hard about how to present MoveMe.
What’s a movie or series you recently enjoyed and why?
Honestly, I enjoy almost every show I start, so picking one feels unfair. What I pay attention to is how a good series makes you need the next episode. Every episode answers one question and leaves a bigger one open. Games can learn a lot from that. If a player stops at the right moment and can’t stop thinking about it, they come back.
Key learnings:
- Build a working version of an idea early so real results can replace assumptions.
- When a core rule changes, expect it to touch every system, and check each one deliberately.
- Small studios can still aim to change the industry; size limits budget, not ambition.
- Break complex technical problems into smaller, testable steps.
- Let a project’s defining mechanic decide which features belong in it.