Childhood friends and lifelong gamers Kashif Khairul and Rizal Azlan co-founded 1+1 Studios in 2024 with one conviction: that the best co-op games should bring people closer together, not just put them side by side. Their debut title, Duo Quest, is a co-op roguelite deckbuilder where your friendship is literally a game mechanic — you answer questions about each other to generate attacks, meaning the better you know your partner, the harder you hit.

The game has not yet launched commercially. But it has already won an award at Gamescom Asia in Bangkok, been nominated for Best Multiplayer at Gamescom LATAM 2026, drawn over 5,000 players to a closed playtest, and gone viral in Japan with over a million views. All this from a six-person studio in Kuala Lumpur, with no external funding.

Kashif and Rizal join us to discuss the gap in the co-op game market, why friendship became the design brief, what Malaysian indie developers need to break through and whether the local scene is more ready than it looks.