Games for smartasses
Puzzles you can hold in your head. A level tells you what has to arrive where, and in what state. How it gets there is your problem, and the institution grades your answer.
Small games. Big hearts. Sharp teeth.
What we do
Cute on the outside.
bonites is a two-person indie studio in Cologne. We make cute games about terrible institutions. Here is what we bring.
Educational, but don’t tell anyone
Miranda has taught for twenty years in three countries. Tom has built serious games for museums and civic education. Between them: one idea at a time, and none of it feels like school.
Shipped before
Tom co-founded Spoonful and shipped six titles on Steam, consoles, mobile and in museums, among them a Deutscher Computerspielpreis winner and a double GDD Indie Award winner. We know what the last ten percent cost.
Projects
In the tubes.
One game in development. The file is below.
Steam · winter 2028
ROHRPOST
A game about quitting.
You want to quit your job. The institution won’t let you.
ROHRPOST is a puzzle game about pneumatic mail in a vast, Kafkaesque bureaucracy. The only way out is doing the job you are trying to leave. Perfectly.
Team
Two people, many hats.
bonites is Tom and Miranda, two people in Cologne who have quit jobs before.
[boˈnites]say “bo-NEE-tes”
Tom Schildhauer
Game design, programming and paperwork. Co-founded Spoonful and ran it as CEO: six titles on Steam, consoles, mobile and in museums, a Deutscher Computerspielpreis and two GDD Indie Awards. Before games, ten years of poetry slam and stand-up.
tomschildhauer.de
Miranda Lalinde
Narrative design, project management and social media. Linguist and educator from Bogotá with an MA in Linguistics from the University of Cologne and nearly twenty years of teaching in Colombia, the US and Germany. Writes the story, the memos and the forms, and keeps the plan.
lalinde.deContact
Say hi!
Press, publishers, collaborations or a chat about games. One address, two readers, no form to fill in.
bonites@bonites.de