Dartlock Development

Prototype slice

AmberClaw Range

Wild West dinosaurs · Frontier planet

On the farthest frontier of space, past anywhere you'd call the middle of nowhere — it's the Wild West. Failed terraforming left a dusty backwater crawling with dinosaurs. Drop through the rift. Stake your claim. Wrangle them. Drive them to town. Get paid.

Prototype slice available for investors. Early access targeted for late 2027, pending funding.

wrangle & drive couch co-op short sessions

Request demo

Multiple titles share a dimensional thread — same universe, different genres. AmberClaw ships first. These follow.

◉

Second flagship

Sci-fi · Magic · Horde combat

Untitled co-op flagship

Deep-space nest raids — dragons instead of bugs. Mine, survive random events, build your kit your way. Hordes escalate until you call orbital fire and sacrifice the defenses you just built.

◈

Park Escape

Horror · Sandbox · Shared maps

Working title

Build your park — then escape when it all goes wrong. Smuggle DNA off the island. Evolved into shareable horror maps: set an objective, run your friends through it.

⬡

Wars of a Lost Age

Tactics · Fantasy dinosaurs

Advanced Wars meets lost worlds

Grid tactics on a fantasy frontier where dinosaurs never died out. Capture, hold, and push — the kind of turn-based war game that doesn't show up on the shelf often enough.

Dartlock Development is a studio that cares about the player. Games that respect real life — designed for tired parents and kids who only have thirty minutes. Hardwired for couch co-op. Open-source technology so communities can host and play long after a title's commercial run ends.

Building principles

Sessions that fit life Meaningful play in fifteen to forty-five minutes. Drop in, make progress, log off without penalty.
No grind for grind's sake Respect the player's time. Progress should feel earned, not metered.
Couch co-op by default Built to share with the people on your sofa — not just strangers online.
Open after end-of-life Open-source hosting and tooling so the work outlives a storefront delisting.

Studio principles

People first Credit where it's due. No crunch. No surprise layoffs when a project ships — we keep making games, and we keep our people working on work worth doing.
Room to create Collaborate across disciplines. Work on what you're good at. Don't get boxed in.
Steward the environment Low-impact husbandry and conservation work alongside the studio — part of how we operate, not a marketing sticker.

Systems work for NASA, ITA, and FERC. Architecture and delivery — not just ideas on paper.

Investors and publishers: we're building a studio to ship multiple titles — not betting everything on one game. Materials and demo available on request.

04 / Founder

Matt Wheelock

I'm a Midwest-based developer and parent. I build games for people who don't always get a full evening — thirty minutes should still matter.

I've spent years architecting and shipping systems for NASA, ITA, and FERC. I know how to structure software that doesn't fall apart. I'm putting that toward games because what I want to play mostly isn't out there.

A government-shutdown layoff in late 2025 cleared the air. I stopped waiting for permission to build full-time. That's what I'm doing now.

We're looking to make our name known.

Flagship