After six years dedicated to introducing platformer aficionados to the world of a certain chameleon and bat, Playtonic Games has announced a brand new venture that will see the developer open up the games industry to its fellow studios.
As well as continuing to work on their own properties, Playtonic Games can today lift the lid on ‘Playtonic Friends’ – the company’s new publishing label designed to bring scores of fresh, creative, and compelling games to the market in the years ahead.
The new venture will allow the company to use its experience of developing and launching both Yooka-Laylee and Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair to enable those hidden-gem games, developers, and new businesses to reach the best audience possible.
“The knowledge that we were coming up to our sixth birthday triggered lots of typical Teams calls amongst the staff here at Playtonic,” said Gavin Price, CEO, Playtonic. “Should we all don party hats and video chat together? Should we have a few mocktails, whip out the Karaoke and belt out our best Beyoncé? Or should we launch a new publishing label designed to bring the best games from indie studios the world over to market? Given I had a bit of scratchy throat that evening – and that the establishment of Playtonic Friends had been brewing as a serious ambition for a while – we went with that.”
Playtonic Friends is thrilled to announce the first three studio partners who will be bringing incredible game experiences to market over the coming months – Bedfordshire-based Awe Interactive, New York studio Fabraz, and international outfit okidokico.
Formed in 2019, Awe Interactive’s first release was a marked hit, with rhythm-action FPS rogue-like BPM: Bullets Per Minute garnering critical and commercial acclaim when it launched on Steam last 15th September 2020.
Fabraz is an indie game dev studio based in New York drawing from minds and talent found across the world. The studio was behind critical darling Slime-san, which won plaudits and high scores aplenty when it launched on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Steam in 2018.
The studio behind the celebrated OK Golf series, okidokico, made its name releasing beautifully crafted titles on iOS and Android and has creatives working in Montreal, Geneva and Tokyo.
“While everyone at Playtonic has dreams of recreating Scrooge McDuck splashing around in his pool of cold, hard cash, in reality our motivation for setting up Playtonic Friends was to take what we’ve learned about producing & releasing video games and use it to aid developers of a like mind looking for a fruitful route to market,” adds Steph Darrah, Business Development Manager, Playtonic. “That said, a yacht moored on the shores of Monte Carlo would be nice.”
Playtonic Friends will soon be able to reveal the first games coming from these partners, as well as its own top-secret new title currently in the works. Stay tuned!
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