Daniel Benmergui

Daniel Benmergui is an Argentine independent game designer best known for Storyteller, a puzzle game about building stories from comic-book panels, and Dragonsweeper, the free browser game that became a word-of-mouth hit in 2025. Based in Buenos Aires, he is one of Latin America's best-known solo game makers.

Benmergui grew up in a rural area of inland Argentina. Before going independent he was a development director at the mobile game studio Gameloft, managing more than 120 developers. He left the job to make small, personal games and has described the switch as an emotional revolution.

Between 2008 and 2009 he made a burst of short experimental games, including I Wish I Were the Moon and Today I Die. The collection Moon Stories won the Jury Award at IndieCade 2009, Today I Die was an IGF Nuovo finalist in 2010, and an early prototype of Storyteller won the IGF Nuovo Award for innovation in 2012. He also co-hosts the Experimental Gameplay Workshop at GDC.

Storyteller then spent more than a decade in development. Benmergui has spoken openly about abandoning it in 2015, moving back in with his mother, and later restarting it with artist Jeremias Babini, who gave it an antique picture-book look. Annapurna Interactive published it for Windows and Nintendo Switch on March 23, 2023, and Netflix brought it to iOS and Android that September. Between projects he released Fidel Dungeon Rescue (2017), a puzzle roguelike starring a dog.

In early 2025 he quietly put Dragonsweeper on itch.io: a free browser game that mixes Minesweeper with RPG combat. It spread fast through recommendations, including from Ars Technica, which called it a favourite game of the year, and inspired a wave of clones. Benmergui shows that a solo designer with a strong idea can still reach a global audience.