Tymon Smektala Wants Broken Mirror Games to Discover Horror's 'Next Kojima'

Broken Mirror Games is setting its sights on a particularly ambitious mission: finding the next major creative voice in horror games. The publishing label, created by Bloober Team, has appointed longtime Dying Light leader Tymon Smektala as executive director, and he has made clear that he wants the company to identify developers with powerful, distinctive visions while those creators are still working on smaller projects.

Smektala spent 13 years at Techland and served as franchise director on Dying Light, a series that helped establish a recognizable blend of open-world zombie survival, freerunning, combat, and dangerous nighttime exploration. Moving into publishing represents a change in responsibilities, but not necessarily in focus. He is now looking beyond a single franchise and toward the people who could shape where horror games go next.

His biggest expression of that ambition is also his most eye-catching. Smektala said he would feel fulfilled if Broken Mirror could find a creator with enough vision and potential to become "the next Kojima." It is an intentionally high bar, invoking the kind of game creator whose identity, themes, and approach are inseparable from the work they make. The point is not that another developer should copy anyone else's style, but that publishing can help unusual authors grow without sanding down the qualities that made their projects stand out in the first place.

A publishing role built around potential

Smektala imagines Broken Mirror finding a developer working on a comparatively small game, recognizing the strength of that team's creative direction, and then helping it expand. In that scenario, the label's role would extend beyond funding or simply putting a game on sale. It would mean offering the benefit of Bloober Team's experience in horror, supporting a studio as it becomes more capable, and giving the creator room to develop a larger audience.

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That approach matters in a genre where a memorable premise can emerge from a tiny team, a single striking mechanic, or an idea that taps into a specific modern anxiety. Horror has always had room for productions of wildly different scales. A lavish cinematic experience can sit alongside a compact game with deliberately rough presentation, and either can leave a lasting impression if it understands how to create tension, uncertainty, and emotional impact.

For a new publishing division, the challenge is identifying which early concepts have that lasting quality. Technical polish is important, but it is not the only consideration. Broken Mirror appears to be looking for projects with a clear identity: games that do more than borrow familiar monsters, haunted locations, or jump-scare rhythms, and instead bring a perspective that feels specific to their creators.

That is a meaningful distinction in an increasingly crowded horror market. There are many games capable of delivering immediate shocks. The titles that endure, however, are often those that give players something to discuss after the surprise has passed: an unsettling world, a thematic idea, a fresh way to interact with danger, or a story that reframes what the player thought they understood.

From Dying Light to a broader horror search

Smektala's background gives him firsthand experience of how a horror-adjacent concept can grow into a long-running series. During his years at Techland, Dying Light became known for its day-and-night cycle, which dramatically changed the feeling of moving through its open worlds. Daytime created one kind of survival problem; darkness made the environment considerably more threatening and encouraged players to rethink risk, mobility, and preparation.

The series' success was not based on zombies alone. It was built around a recognizable structure in which traversal and escalating fear worked together. Being fast and agile could make players feel empowered, while the arrival of night could quickly undermine that confidence. That kind of mechanical contrast is relevant to Smektala's new work because it illustrates how horror can be shaped through systems, not solely through visual design or scripted scares.

Broken Mirror's stated direction suggests it wants to support games that similarly find new angles. Some may be driven by narrative, others by multiplayer tension, handheld-specific interaction, or an unconventional presentation. The common thread is not one subgenre. It is a desire to locate creators who can add something that horror gaming has not already seen countless times.

New horror needs more than novelty

Smektala has pointed to recent horror cinema as an example of the kind of creative breakthrough he wants to find in games. He cited Obsession, Backrooms, and Weapons as works representing new approaches to the genre, including an example that originated from a content creator. For him, the ambition is to discover horror-game creators who can bring similarly distinctive ideas to the medium and complement the projects Broken Mirror is already preparing.

Bloober Team CEO Piotr Babieno expanded on that thought by emphasizing that horror should not be reduced to entertainment value or superficial uniqueness. In his view, the strongest horror works engage with fears present in society. People are frightened by something for a reason, and stories that touch those concerns can resonate beyond their immediate scares.

This does not mean every horror game needs to be an explicit social commentary. Sometimes a great horror experience is simply a terrifying challenge with an excellent atmosphere. But Babieno's view describes the deeper potential of the genre: fear can reveal pressures, doubts, and changes that people struggle to articulate directly. A game about isolation, loss of control, surveillance, alienation, illness, technology, or community can become more unsettling when it recognizes what makes those ideas uncomfortable in the first place.

That emphasis may be especially significant for smaller creators. Independent teams can often take creative risks that larger productions may avoid, whether that means pursuing an unusual subject, embracing a strange aesthetic, or building a game around a mechanic that is difficult to categorize. A publisher capable of recognizing the value in those risks could help turn a promising experiment into a more substantial release.

Broken Mirror's projects show a wide view of horror

The label already has multiple horror games in development, and the announced projects indicate that Broken Mirror is not limiting itself to one type of experience. Saw: Genesis is described as taking a more involved approach to asymmetrical multiplayer. That is a crowded but still evolving space, where the challenge is to make the different roles in a match feel compelling rather than simply assigning one side the power and the other side the burden of survival.

Asymmetrical horror games live or die by the tension between players. The hunted group needs meaningful choices and a chance to outthink the threat, while the opposing side needs tools that make it feel dangerous without making the outcome feel inevitable. A more involved design could potentially give Saw: Genesis an opportunity to distinguish itself, though the details of how it will do so remain to be seen.

Another project, Onyx: The Dark Grip, is being developed exclusively for Switch 2. Its concept is tied directly to the handheld experience, with an aim to put fear back into players' hands in a literal sense. The description points to a game designed around the specific intimacy of portable play: the screen is close, the controls are physically held, and horror can become a more personal, immediate experience when it is not separated from the player by a television across the room.

The Switch 2 focus also demonstrates that Broken Mirror sees platform identity as a possible part of a game's creative identity. Rather than treating hardware as a final distribution decision, the team appears interested in considering how a device can influence the design itself. For horror, that could mean the way a player holds the system, the conditions in which they play, or the feeling of having an unsettling experience contained in their hands.

The difficult work starts with finding the right creators

There is no guaranteed formula for discovering a defining new horror creator. The next breakout talent may be making a small experimental game, building an audience through online videos, working in another genre entirely, or developing an idea that initially seems too odd for conventional publishing. That uncertainty is exactly why a publishing label's taste and willingness to take chances can be as important as its resources.

Smektala's comments set a lofty standard for Broken Mirror Games, but they also outline a practical aspiration. The label wants to find developers whose work already contains a strong creative core, then provide support that allows those teams to grow while preserving what made their projects compelling. Bloober Team's own horror experience is intended to be part of that support, rather than a blueprint every partner must follow.

For players, the promise is not merely more horror games. It is the prospect of horror games that approach fear from different directions: through multiplayer pressure, handheld interaction, social unease, unfamiliar mechanics, or a singular creator's perspective. Whether Broken Mirror ultimately finds the kind of defining talent Smektala is describing will take time to determine. But the goal is clear: seek out the ideas with enough conviction to become the genre's next major voices, before the rest of the industry catches up.