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[jonaz.dk]

Recent DK releases on Steam!

The Girl Who Kicked a Rabbit made it out of Early Access and it to 1.0 release


Desecrators full release trailer


And the same for Desecrators released on EA back in 2021.

[jonaz.dk]

Some of the good old DK developed Amiga games has now been provided for free by Cope-Com!

Currently available:
Battle Squadron - Browser playable link of the cracked version (lol!) on archive.org + ADF download
Hybris - ADF download
Sword of Sodan - ADF download

C64 and Sega MegaDrive titles seems to be planned

More on:
https://cope-com.com

Battle Squadron was probably the best of the lot. The soundtrack by Ron Klaren will always be a complete banger!

[jonaz.dk]

Spotted a DK kickstarter for the rare of a kind F2P mobile game. The Subway Surfers inspired 'Saga of Wings'.

Currently the KS is not going super great.... 0% funded with 12 days to go.
Crowdfunding and F2P mobile titles just doesn't mix very well.

[jonaz.dk]

Millioninvestering til nordiske spil – men hvor står Danmark?

Den Europæiske Investeringsfond investerer millioner i nordiske spilstudier gennem Behold Ventures. Men hvad betyder det for danske udviklere, og kunne Danmark selv gøre mere for at tiltrække investeringer?
https://arkaden.dk/millioninvestering-t ... r-danmark/

[jonaz.dk]

Spilordning is now back, now this time under Nimbi!
As far as I understand there is little to no change in the actual Spilordningen program and staffing.
So old wine on old bottles with a new label.
Ading though we should probaly expect adjustments to the program over time.

Great to see the transition has been made and is ready for applications again.

Btw. My poor eyes hurts a bit from the Nimbi logotype and website colors (https://nimbi.dk/)

Spilordningen
Spilordningen er NIMBIs pulje til udvikling, produktion og lancering af danske digitale spil.

Der forventes to ansøgningsfrister i 2025.

ANSØGNINGSFRISTER
Udvikling og produktion
Forår: 8. april kl. 12:00
Efterår: Annonceres senere

Spørgemøder
København d. 14. marts kl. 15:00
Jorcks Passage 1B, 4. sal

Den 24. marts kl. 14:00
Online. Tilmelding: kj@nimbi.dk

More on:
https://nimbi.dk/spilordningen.html

[jonaz.dk]

Today is also the opening of Hub42. The new public facing center for Danish games and game development, organized by Games Denmark and Pixel TV.

Not sure why the name is so non-descriptive.

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/abning-af- ... 1468037589

Update: Just dropped by after work. Super nice place they have built! Hope things will be great for the new hub!

[jonaz.dk]

Spotted another big IP on the way from Mood following the Valheim board game.

It's soon time for Goat Simulator The Card Game.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mo ... -card-game

[jonaz.dk]

When you're not around
DK release from Kenneth Faigh for very free of charge!



'When you're not around' on itch
https://kennethfaigh.itch.io/when-youre-not-around

[jonaz.dk]

Another free DK student game released!

Death to the Universe: ACT I, by the team Fueled By Cookies.

[jonaz.dk]

Sad to see stuff like this in the Danish games industry. Especially between people I like a lot both of them and have known for a couple of decades. It is the deeply engrained personal exception to the rule of an industry that usually gets along very well, even though we may have our differences.

One could hope for a friendly resolution. But sadly not convinced it will ever happen.

More comments on the linkedin post. It doesn't embed here.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dinopatt ... 30913-QJ9G

In conclusion.. please chill it with the lawfare as nobody really wins and looks really bad.

[jonaz.dk]

So the next instalment of the Subways Surfers IP has been out in softlaunch since mid 2024 it seems.

Subway Surfers City

With quite the time in the cooker it's great to see something materializing. Visuals are very pretty and polished! With a few new gameplay additions. It looks and plays nice judging from a short spin of the game.

Also to my knowledge it is an actual in-house production!!! As opposed to some of the recent Subway casual spinoffs.

The biggest reason for the game to exist is the new meta.
But not super convinced it will be enough to really move the needle in a strong direction for SYBO. (Though I may be too hard on this one). Basically a conservative side-grade that offers little new to players. Developed on a budget far exceeding the original competing against their own IP. Though it is not necessarily so important it is something too new. As long as it works and players are happy. While not having a huge upkeep cost.


Their latest runner release from a few years back, Blades of Brim (2015) was put on the side burner. Even when having achieved 10M+ downloads to date. So in SYBO relative numbers it will take quite the numbers to make sense to maintain. But expecting City to do some nice downloads once it fully releases. We will see here it lands! Temple Run 2 is the rare sequel that did really well. Others has not emulated that success. In general, sequels are hard! Runners are hard and is among the hardest game types to monetize well. Mostly through ad views.

[[WHOOPSIE!! it's not 10M it's sadly 1M. ]]
The casual spinoffs Blast and Match seems to have done pretty ok! With 10M+ and 5M+ DLs on Android to date. Though I would >assume< there is are revenue sharing models setup with the developing studios. And it is games that are quite far from the runner origins. So certainly expecting City to do better as it is much more in line with the general Subway audience would want.
Though it is inherently difficult to compare these different game types with just public download figures. Runners and traditional casual games monetizes a bit differently. The casual games are likely to have a higher earning capacity per user generally speaking.

[[ CORRECTION!! ]]
Whoopsie.. sadly it's NOT 10M+ DL for Subways Surfers Match. It's 1M+. (How on Earth did I see that as 10M?!?)

Subways Surfers Match 1M+
Last update: Mar 13, 2024

Subways Surfers Blast 5M+
Last update: Jan 30, 2024

So in SYBO relative numbers combined with not a whole lot of super recent updates of the apps, one >could< get the impression that games didn't perform as expected and has been put on the side burner with minimal life support. Up until those dates the games received updates fairly frequently. Could be wrong here... but the usual pattern would be to see the amount of updates on a live-game suddenly go to very low/none if the title is not performing as expected anymore. Though they did have some time.
>> ALSO: Nothing verified! << Just speculating here. Like I usually like to do.

Sadly my 2022 post about 'Match' foresaw it would not be easy going into the casual space with an IP that is not really focused on the casual audience. Competing against a highly optimized landscape of games in the same genre. Well at least they gave it a shot with an alternative genre outside the runners.
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4775&p=23579&#p23579

All in all this seems to put some pressure on Subways Surfers City to perform really well.
Crossing fingers it will pan out well for the new project!

Soft launching for 7-8'ish month with 100K+ downloads on Android and much less on iOS for such a big IP with billions of downloads seems to indicate they have not landed it quite there yet. Let's hope it will do good in the future. ~162 employee (latest public numbers) mouths to feed is not cheap. So by size they just need really big splashes to thrive.

Also pretty good ratings so far! Still early days, though slightly less than the original Subway Surfers on Android, Rating: 4.4 / (41.8M reviews). Rating: 4.6 / (3.2M reviews) on iOS. City's iOS rating at 4.8 with only 40 reviews is to be taken with a grain of salt currently.

So yeah! Challenges are many but super exiting to see where the next big thing from SYBO will lead! It would be a tall order to top the originals thundering success. But just some percentage of the way should be sufficient to create a success.

4.2 rating on GooglePlay (840 reviews)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... game&hl=en

4.8 on iOS (40 reviews)
https://apps.apple.com/dk/app/subway-su ... 6504188939




Also scouring around the interwebs reveals SYBO (or an affiliated studio) was working on another runner title named Danger Rainbow back in 2019. But it looks like it never got of the ground. But that's another story! Always fun to dig in hidden game history. Also it is completely normal, especially for F2P studios, having a lot of never truly released titles floating around. At least this one got so far as to be picked up by the PureAPK. Judging from the information alone it probably didn't make a whole lot of sense making Danger Rainbow to begin with. Just another runner on a completely new and less cool IP would have had a very hard time.
https://apkpure.com/danger-rainbow/com. ... er_rainbow
(Don't know if the download is particularly safe.. probably don't would be the general recommendation!)

[jonaz.dk]

Event: Extending Unity; why you should do it and when you shouldn't do it!

Tuesday, March 11, 2025
5:30 PM to 8:30 PM CET
https://www.meetup.com/unity-meetup-cop ... 305614568/

[jonaz.dk]

So yeah... crazy times in AI as usual!

One of the latest models, Manus is probably the first public autonomous agentic AI to hit the interwebs?!

It can do a lot of stuff! Including generating games! Wes Roth takes a look at the system. While prompting it to create a game.
Though it doesn't get up and running properly on the first try. But other mentioned projects has demonstrated it is certainly possible though AI to even do 3D multiplayer games. Not very good ones though! But it's absolutely insane it is even possible.

And as always.. these systems will only improve over time. So like it or not, It's a new world knocking on our doors.

Noting: There should be an incredible pressure on the servers and limited signup.
Manus can be found here: (Chinese project)
https://manus.im

[jonaz.dk]

Forgotlings from (DK) Throughline Games gets a new Release Date Trailer!

Spoiler: June 12th, 2025.
Console releases at a later date.

[jonaz.dk]

So Flashbulbs Trailmakers 2.0 launched very recently.

With a nice cinematic animated trailer from Space Office. There is also plenty of gameplay vids floating around.


Trailmakers 2.0


While looking for the animated trailer I found the "Brutally Honest Review of Trailmakers 2.0" from Pandakiller910.
Where the level of angry gamer rage is off the charts. It has it's own charm! Probably the best rage video about a Danish video game I have ever seen. But obviously not something devs should aspire to receive from their community.

On the Steam stats I can see the community have not been perfectly satisfied with the update.
I hope they manage to fix the issues and save some grace with their community. Doing an online game with frequent updates, open world, physics based construction of user generated content on top, while also supporting last gen consoles is inherently extremely difficult!
So challenges like this is to be expected. Besides it looks like it was a rarer case and most players are happy.
And a note to raged gamers out there. Selling the company to another entity, however competent. Would without doubt end in complete disaster. A game like Trailmakers takes a lot of deep care and knowhow to support.

(Disclaimer: Very F-word heavy video. Audio ON is a must)

[jonaz.dk]

And today is launch day for the DK solo project Splort developed by Mikkel Jensby.

I saw a bunch of kids a Copenhagen Gaming Week TAGS having a blast playing it at the venue.
Grats on the release in a few hours!

[jonaz.dk]

Forgotton Anne from (DK) Throughline Games is currently on deep discount at 90% off.

[jonaz.dk]

Updates to the NURBS modeler Plasticity.
Recently met a few students getting very good and fast results with the tool.

Also heard updated NURBS modelling and SDF modelling tools is on the way to Blender.

Plasticity 2025.1 Release Trailer


More on:
https://www.plasticity.xyz/

[jonaz.dk]

Realtime AI driven 3D sketching is on the way.

Looking promising for things not requiring high levels of precision.



More on:
https://derkleineli.github.io/meshpad/

[jonaz.dk]

Gamejam entries from Aalborg based Create Jam's 10 years anniversary!
https://itch.io/jam/create-jam-spring-2025/entries

It's a free gamejam by the way.

[jonaz.dk]

Steam page for the DK project Pengu: Lost and Wanted by STANN.co

Cute Sonic-like 2D platformer!

There is also a free demo on Newgrounds:
https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/962211

Update: Demo has been added to the Steam page

[jonaz.dk]

2025 Unity Gaming Report

https://unity.com/resources/gaming-report

Adding:
The Unity 2025 GDC Roadmap

[jonaz.dk]

Pitch Night with Raw Fury
Practice your pitches with publishing studio Raw Fury - pitch your deck or learn from others!

Thursday, March 27
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/pitch-nigh ... 9439992459

[jonaz.dk]

Nordic Game 2025 in Malmö is getting closer

Nordic Game 2025
20-23 May at Slagthuset in Malmö, Sweden

https://nordicgame.com/

[jonaz.dk]

So... the world just changed, also in games programming.
Or it has been out for a little while.. I'm just slow to spot it.

Also there are surly other AI programming tools out there. I just happened to stumble upon this one.

The world in coding has now been completely democratized. I am from the time where developers had to write their own engines to do games. Though I never had what it took to do just that. A tool like Unity did it's huge part in opening up game development to a broad audience. AI coding.. just opened up so basically everybody can create games now. Future AI agents will make it even more accessible.

Meaning... more competition and the need to stand out will be even more important than ever.

I don't think the world in (games) programming has quite caught up with the implications just yet. And the tech probably has it's issues and is not suitable for all project types.
But time will catch up sooner or later and the models will only improve over time as well.

It is mind blowing capability what we are seeing right now!!!

Adding: For the people out there who always dreamed about creating their own games. But couldn't find programmers or artists to work on your project and was not determined enough to do it yourself. (The main problem being lack of determination and grit).
NOW THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO EXCUSE FOR NOT START DOING YOUR OWN GAME!!
(Scoped within reason of cause). All AI tools (or assets packs on the asset stores for that matter and YouTube tutorials) are now available for you to start creating right now!! TODAY!!!
HIGHLY recommending learning fundamentals first though.

Also you should also not expect it to create the next Elden Ring in a single prompt.
With moderate usecases and expectations you can get somewhere.

Download the new world of AI programming here:
https://www.cursor.com