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Headlight Studio
May 24, 2026 at 06:19 PM
Added studio context, parallel project framing, and production milestone
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.
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.
Headlight Studio is located at 199 Rue Helene Boucher, 34170 Castelnau-le-Lez, France, near the city of Montpellier in southern France.
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.
Game | Genre | Status |
|---|---|---|
Open-world survival, co-op | Alpha (Early Access target: 2027) | |
Backrooms: Extractions | 1 to 6 player co-op horror | Steam Early Access since April 30, 2025 |
Backrooms: Extractions is a side project developed by Headlight Studio that entered Steam Early Access on April 30, 2025. The game supports 1 to 6 player co-op horror gameplay and sold over 30,000 copies in its first two months. A PlayStation version is planned.
Backrooms: Extractions is a testing ground for technologies and systems that feed back into Rooted. Features developed and validated in Backrooms include:
AI behavior systems (later applied to enemy AI in Rooted).
VOIP implementation (used in Rooted's multiplayer).
Networking infrastructure and multiplayer code.
UI frameworks and interaction patterns.
The studio has expanded during Rooted's development. After Alpha Phase 2, Kevin was hired as a dedicated networking developer to strengthen the multiplayer infrastructure for both Rooted and Backrooms: Extractions.
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.
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.
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.
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.
