Overview
Headlight Studio is an independent game development studio based in France, near Montpellier. The studio is the developer and self-publisher of Rooted, handling all aspects of production without an external publisher.
Leadership
The studio was founded by Mathieu Pascal, who is the game director and founder. Pascal leads the creative and technical direction of Rooted and oversees all studio operations.
Location
Headlight Studio is located at 199 Rue Helene Boucher, 34170 Castelnau-le-Lez, France, near the city of Montpellier in southern France.
Production Approach
The studio is fully independent with no external publisher. All production is handled in-house, including environment art, gameplay programming, technical design, audio, and publishing. This approach gives the studio complete creative control over Rooted's development.
Games
Game | Genre | Status |
|---|---|---|
Open-world survival, co-op | Alpha (Early Access target: 2027) |
Team Growth
Studio Context
Headlight Studio is an indie French team based near Montpellier, working as both developer and publisher of Rooted. The studio's communication frames Rooted as a long-term project shaped by playtest cycles, alpha cohort feedback, and dedicated alpha events run alongside the core development cadence.
Production Milestone
In Q1 2026 the studio confirmed the transition from pre-production to full production for Rooted, alongside team expansion and accelerated development cadence. This change underpins the 2027 Early Access target and supports the ongoing Phase 3 content drops.
Community Foundation
Crowdfunding launched in Q3 2022 and brought in more than twenty thousand backers, with closed alpha builds reaching backers from Q4 2023 onward. The studio runs limited-time seasonal events (Halloween 2023 cosmetics, Christmas 2023 cosmetics) for testers and shares dev updates regularly through the project site, store community page, and dev blog.
Roadmap Commitments
Public commitments include the 2027 Early Access launch on Steam and Epic, full crossplay at Early Access, eight launch languages, mandatory modding support with Steam Workshop blueprint sharing, post-Early-Access PvP on dedicated servers, and a PlayStation console release planned after the full PC release.