Unravel celebrated its 10-year anniversary on February 9, 2025. Below, we look back on the tiny passion project and speak with a developer about how it came together.
During EA’s E3 2015 press conference, Coldwood Studios’ Martin Sahlin came out on stage and revealed a cute platformer called Unravel. As he revealed Yarny’s handcrafted origins and spoke about the heart and passion Coldwood had in creating this new experience, you could hear and see him growing more emotional. It wasn’t an E3 flub, but a reminder that the industry is at its best when developers have space to make games they love.
Unravel turned 10 years old on February 9. I still remember the game’s impassioned reveal and how I had such a wonderful time playing. Revisiting Unravel at its surprisingly distinct sequel ahead of this anniversary, I was taken aback by how refreshing these yarn-filled adventures were. I was even more excited to learn that some of the team is reuniting to work on a new game launching later this year.
Unravel was the result of a small studio making something that it was passionately and personally connected to during a rough time for the video game industry. In 2026, we could certainly use more games like it.
Speaking with one of Unravel’s former developers, I learned that the game was created by a team burned out by the industry. Coldwood was founded by excited developers in 2003, but had primarily worked on low-budget, short-development-timeline games like The Fight: Lights Out that were highly stressful for the development team.
“Even though it was fun, it was not perhaps the dream of our lives to do that,” Jakob Marklund, former Technical Director at Coldwood Interactive, told me.
By 2013, Coldwood had downsized its team and was low on cash. Around that time, the story Sahlin shared at E3 took place. He crafted Yarny on a trip into the Scandinavian wilderness and noticed that there was potential for a yarn-based puzzle platformer. From there, Coldwood iterated on the idea and hired an agent who helped them sell it to EA, with Worldwide Studios Executive VP Patrick Soderlund in particular becoming enamored with it.
This led to the game’s vulnerable reveal at E3 2015, which garnered positive reactions online. “We were squeezed between these sports giants, and then a guy from Northern Sweden came up on stage and just wanted to tell you about that small game that we’re doing. I think that was so key to the success of the game,” Marklund reflected.
Unravel is a platformer in which Yarny ventures through an old woman’s memories, exploring idyllic Swedish landscapes and solving puzzle-platforming challenges often tied to yarn. They’re cozy platformers where you use yarn to solve puzzles: swinging across long distances, pulling levers or objects, and creating yarn bridges to walk across or bounce on.
There’s no dialogue, but a moving story about how love bonds us through thick and thin shines thanks to beautiful visuals that still hold up today and an excellent soundtrack. Looking back on the project, Marklund tells me he’s proudest of the small details, like Yarny’s procedural animation and the way Coldwood played with emotions in level design: “We’re not pushing the story into people’s minds; we’re telling it with gameplay. And that’s quite cool.”
Unravel
Coldwood and EA considered Unravel a success, and Unravel helped inspire the EA Originals label that has given us games like Split Fiction. Meanwhile, Coldwood went to work on a sequel, a physics-based co-op platformer Marklund tells me built on the fact that people liked playing Unravel with loved ones.
Unravel Two offers a different kind of fun, somewhere between the quaintness of Unravel and the co-op thrills of It Takes Two. Looking back, Marklund sees the original Unravel as a game that “nailed it in terms of emotions and character” over gameplay, while Unravel Two is a “super tight platformer” that “didn’t nail the emotions as much as we did in the first game.”
Coldwood Interactive would ultimately go dark after Unravel Two. Marklund told me that developers at the studio began acting like “a grumpy old couple” after working together for so long and that the studio started looking into “strange free-to-play stuff” that didn’t jive with some developers who had thrived making premium, personal, indie-level experiences.
The passion and heart that birthed Unravel were gone.
By 2022, most of Coldwood’s developers had moved on. Martin Sahlin and Jakob Marklund founded Windup Games and, as of 2026, about half of Unravel’s development team is working at Windup alongside some new hires who are more diverse in age and gender. Windup Games is currently developing a 3D puzzle-platformer starring mice called Hela.
Marklund still sees some connective tissue between Hela and the Unravel games, particularly in the Scandinavian setting and the ways it builds on the co-op puzzle-platforming elements introduced in Unravel Two. That’s a testament to how Unravel’s influence is still being felt today. Its legacy is not just EA Originals, but a brand-new game launching this year. The video game industry could also learn a lot from the conditions that created Unravel.
Unravel
“We had so much fun doing [Unravel],” Marklund told me. “We had full creative freedom from EA, so we could do the game that they knew we were capable of doing. We had final say and could do whatever we thought was suitable. I think that was key to the success of the game.”
When you first boot up Unravel, and when you beat it, you’re met with kind messages thanking you for playing the game and reiterating that it was art made out of love by Coldwood. Unravel still exudes the emotional energy of its E3 2015 reveal. In 2026, the new games that resonate with me the most are the ones where that love and passion for the gaming medium shines through, like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
Unravel was delicately handcrafted by developers who loved what they were working on and were given the freedom to do so by a major publisher. Art that’s this personal can become timeless and leave behind a legacy. At a time when some companies treat games more like products than art, replaying Unravel is a reminder that love and passion are key to making fantastic games. Developers who have the space to tap into those emotions make unforgettable experiences.
