Germany has long been one of Europe s major hubs for game development, but the national industry has thrived despite an incomplete ecosystem.
At the end of the 2000s, for example, it had several of the leading companies in the browser game market, some of which would become leaders in the emerging mobile space. If you wanted to find a path into one of these companies through education, however, options were severely limited.
The origin of Mimimi Games, the studio behind the widely praised Desperados 3, can be traced back to exactly that period, at one of the only game design courses in Germany. According to Johannes Roth, the company s managing director, its six co-founders first met on that course in Munich, having traveled from around the country to be there.
Independent funding source Kowloon Nights has kicked off 2021 with a deluge of new partnerships to fund 23 new upcoming games from indie studios.
These projects include new, unannounced titles from Paradise Killer developer Kaizen Game Works; Star Renegades developer Massive Damage; Oxenfree and Afterparty studio Night School; OlliOlli developer Roll7; Absolver developer Sloclap; and a new game from Thunder Lotus, the team behind last year s Spiritfarer.
Kowloon Nights is also supporting several previously announced projects, including Rose City Games/Picogram s Garden Story; Sabotage Studio s Sea of Stars, set in the same universe as the developer s prior project The Messenger; and She Dreams Elsewhere, the debut project from one-person team Studio Zevere.
, and
Oxenfree developers, were announced on Thursday. Kowloon Nights announced its investment fund in 2018 with a slate of games with budgets ranging from $500,000 to $5 million, including one from
The Last Guardian creator Fumito Ueda. In its second year, Kowloon Nights added 10 more projects, a few of which were released last year. (Beloved Thunder Lotus Games management simulator
Spiritfarer and Timberline Studio’s
Twenty-three more games will be funded this time around, including projects from past Kowloon Nights partners, like Thunder Lotus.
“We are incredibly proud to work with such talented studios and developers whose innovative work previously has brought to the community games ranging from
Kowloon Nights Is Funding 23 New Games, Including Ones From Teams Behind Spiritfarer And Oxenfree
It s a big day for indie game fans, as games fund company Kowloon Nights dedicates $100 million (£73.2m) towards 23 upcoming and unannounced titles.
The studios that will receive a portion of that one hundred million dollars include Thunder Lotus (Spiritfarer), Night School Studios (Oxenfree, Afterparty) and Sabotage Studio (The Messenger). Some studios are being funded to create their very first games, such as surreal RPG She Dreams Elsewhere, cutesy Stardew-like Garden Story, and a game called Project Kafka by fkkcloud, which is a hack-n-slash dating sim inspired by Persona.
[This unedited press release is made available courtesy of Gamasutra and its partnership with notable game PR-related resource Games Press.]
POST-
HUMAN
EARTH – January 13, 2021 – 30XX, the new Megaroguelike action platformer from Batterystaple Games, follows in the footsteps of its acclaimed predecessor enjoyed by more than 200,000 players on Feb. 17, 2021, by springing into Steam Early Access.
Alongside the classic roguelike Arcade Mode and permadeath-free Mega Mode campaign,
30XX empowers fans to design the levels of their dreams with Maker Mode. Modeled after the tools used to develop the game, this level editor allows the community to craft custom stages and share them with the world.