News! Tech! Tools! Talks! Games! And Stuff Worth Sharing!

[jonaz.dk]

And it turns out What the Golf is not the only DK project to land on the Apple Vision Pro on launch day.
Also LEGO® Builder's Journey from Light Brick Studio is a lunch title.

I could certainly see more LEGO things showing up. Needless to say they company is in a very fortunate financial position where they can just put things out there for the sake of it.

[jonaz.dk]

Gameyard Aarhus #006: Fredagsbar
https://filmbyaarhus.dk/vis-event/v/122 ... tid=130240

[jonaz.dk]

The first public pre-alpha footage from Silkroad Studios 'Project Foxtale'

Had a chat with their creative director/co-founder Maximus at Copenhagen Gaming Week and played the demo for a bit.
Best of luck to Max and team for future project development!

[jonaz.dk]

DK Kickstarter for Grotten - 1 Bit Deeper
Minimalistic oldschool tile-based dungeon crawl TTRPG. Solo, co-op, with or without a GM. 1-bit dark fantasy setting.
Created by Tommy Sunzenauer

Already funded! Nice to a table top game with 1 bit aesthetics.

[jonaz.dk]

New'ish DK project and company spotting!

Firebird Games casual developer of multiplayer instant games
https://firebirdgames.com

Monolith Dominion by Chuckle Warriors (Solodev I think)


Tea Cup Games. Unknown which project they are working on. But the company seems to founded around a team of Viborg TAW peeps.
https://teacupgames.com

[jonaz.dk]

Chop Chop Games, KhoraVR, Netcompany and Google Danmark has developed Glampus High for Roblox.
Mainly Chop Chop and Khora on actual development of the project as far as I can see.

Just gave it a quick spin. Seemingly it was completely devoid of players at the moment.. well it is school hours. Also the world looked pretty bland. It was also hard to see exactly how the curiosity for STEM should be triggered though Roblox as a stand alone thing. The theme I picked up on was mainly climate change. And 'You can fix climate change by planting a few trees. Done!'

But at least there is a potential on Roblox for hitting the younger audience. Though the potential for distractions from other more popular Roblox titles is exponential, even if pushed. So not sure if the target audience is likely to adopt these types of institutional/corporate agenda pushing attempts (be it long term recruitment efforts, corporate signaling and/or ESG score) and if it will have a much measurable effect in the real world. Besides the stated goal of getting more young people into STEM is great by the way, I just think it's extraordinarily hard to execute well with measurable meaningful results. But let's see where it goes!

Update 1! Something I see that would be more helpful would be to do even more >PERMANENT< classes and courses Coding Pirates style for the girls.
Seems a bit of a silly to do the gender division. But if some girls are more willing to go on girls only teams, so be it. I don't know the dynamics. But at a young age there might be the need for special treatment in that case for some. As long as it doesn't create an us vs. them divide.
Eg: Coding Pirates has their Girls day in science. https://codingpirates.dk/475-piger-kode ... n-science/
An extension of this or other permanent events/organizations that would be able to inspire new generations with STEM would be the way forward in my perspective.


Glampus High on Roblox
https://www.roblox.com/games/14211095618/Glampus-High

Nyt onlinespil skal inspirere piger til en fremtid inden for tech
Piger mister i stor stil interessen for naturvidenskab og IT allerede midt i folkeskolen. Nu har Netcompany og Google Danmark udviklet det første non-profit læringsbaserede univers i det populære computerspil Roblox. Målet er at vække pigers appetit på naturvidenskab og teknologi - så flere af dem vælger at gå den vej senere i livet.

Press
https://via.ritzau.dk/pressemeddelelse/ ... 52&lang=da

[jonaz.dk]

Puzzle game Sticky Struggles from Paction Games ApS just launched on Steam to an extraordinary low price.

Grats on the release!

[jonaz.dk]

DK project spotting

Cellfish from newcomer BRTL Games (Solodev I think). Launching Q1 2024.

[jonaz.dk]

Sad news from BetaDwarf, due to strategic reasons within one of their business partners, they have had to let go of 10 of their employees.

Best of luck to all of them!

BetaDwarf has been super nice and made a list of people who are now looking for employment:
https://betadwarf.notion.site/List-of-p ... b7dd8a7e02

[jonaz.dk]

Big dealings!

Disney Invests $1.5 Billion in ‘Fortnite’ Developer Epic Games: ‘Our Biggest Foray Into the Game Space Ever,’ Iger Says
https://variety.com/2024/gaming/news/di ... 235901457/

[jonaz.dk]

Free unreal assets for February 2024
https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplac ... s?tag=4910

[jonaz.dk]

Unsurprising there is a record amount of applicants for Spilordningen this time around. The industry has seen a lot of layoffs so it would be natural that some new startups (adding on top of the already established compaines) has created an even larger demand for public funding. Interesting to see the funded projects in a little while!

Rekordhøj søgning til Spilordningen
SPIL. Årets første ansøgningsrunde til Spilordningen er overstået, og hele 48 projekter har søgt om i alt knap 30 mio. kr. til udvikling og produktion af spil. Interessen afspejler branchens forhåbninger om flere tilskudsmidler, siger redaktør Simon Løvind.

https://www.dfi.dk/nyheder/rekordhoej-s ... lordningen

[jonaz.dk]

Projects from recent DK gamejam - Future Game Makers Jam 2024
https://itch.io/jam/future-game-makers-jam-2024/entries

[jonaz.dk]

Dead Faces from DK Aza Game Studio now has a Steam Page

[jonaz.dk]

Big DK release day today! Big grats to all!

Airhead is finally out!


Very pretty Airhead launch trailer


GOG
https://www.gog.com/en/game/airhead

XBOX
https://www.xbox.com/da-dk/games/store/ ... 9g4pfq6868

PlayStation
https://store.playstation.com/en-us/concept/10004203

Epic
https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/airhead-945e54

Amazon Luna
https://luna.amazon.com/detail/B0CVCHRV8C

A few reviews of Airhead here
https://www.metacritic.com/game/airhead/
https://www.thexboxhub.com/airhead-review/
https://opencritic.com/game/16290/airhead

Adding new narrated trailer


SpellRogue is out now!


Also a demo of Machine Match is out

[jonaz.dk]

A bunch of Nordic Game 2024 posts!

NG24 SPRING: SCHEDULE REVEALED, UPGRADES ON SALE & MORE!
https://nordicgame.com/join-to-ng24-spr ... r-jubilee/

NG24 SPRING SPEAKER CALL: SUBMIT YOUR TALK NOW
https://nordicgame.com/ng24-spring-speaker-call/

JOIN DEVELOPER SHOWCASE AND SHINE AT NG24 SPRING
https://nordicgame.com/join-developer-s ... 24-spring/

PASS DISCOUNTS AVAILABLE FOR NG24 SPRING
https://nordicgame.com/partner-discount ... rdic-game/

[jonaz.dk]

There is also a Steam Next Fest demo of DK project The Girl Who Kicked a Rabbit!

[jonaz.dk]

Also Gameworkers.dk is now a thing. Seems mostly like a front (for now at least) to get people to sign up for the existing and collaborating unions like HK, Prosa, FAF and DM. Which I guess already covers what is needed but is not exclusive games industry related. Also I heard IDA should be working on a separate union initiative focused on the games industry. Let's see where it all goes!
https://www.gameworkers.dk

[jonaz.dk]

DR released 3 new apps. Leg, Lær, Krea a few days ago. A bunch of these are developed by PortaPlay.

https://www.facebook.com/portaplaydk/po ... XqLBnizaFl

DR præsenterer tre nye Ramasjang-apps til børn
Ramasjang KREA, Ramasjang LEG og Ramasjang LÆR tilbyder kvalitetsindhold til børn i alderen 4-8 år, og med opdelingen i LÆR, LEG og KREA er det blevet nemmere for forældre at vælge, om skærmtiden skal bruges til læring, underholdning eller kreativitet.
https://www.dr.dk/om-dr/nyheder/dr-prae ... -til-boern

[jonaz.dk]

Rest in Peace Jabii!! (Late spotted)

I salute your bravery in developing physical devices along game functionality. It is fundamentally >extraordinarily< difficult to pull off. Games are hard enough on it's own, adding an (expensive) physical device you have to sell along will raise the stakes to insane levels of difficulty for a startup. My skepticism back in 2020 was not unfounded and sadly this time it was not to be. :_(
Best of luck to the former team!



Jabii Group has been declared bankrupt
https://datacvr.virk.dk/enhed/virksomhe ... =0&size=10

[jonaz.dk]

The Tipping Point from (DK) Fabula Studios is launching the 22nd of February.
They are no strangers to the colder climate as they were working with Morten Brunbjerg, on the now canned Glacier narrative driven side scroller game project. So it seems like one thing lead to another. The Tipping Point will be free.

[jonaz.dk]

And today is launch day for Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor by Funday Games and Ghost Ship Games!
Grats to all! Though we will miss the Funday guys in Copenhagen tomorrow! :_(
I am more than sure the game will be a great success!

Related there is an interview on NME with Søren Lundgaard CEO at GSG
https://www.nme.com/features/gaming-fea ... ic-3586886

[jonaz.dk]

Grats to Geometric Interactive!



Update. And another DK win at DICE. Big grats to Tim and Triband for winning the best mobile game of the year with What the Car?

[jonaz.dk]

Also big grats to Ghost Ship Publishing with their stellar debut of their first two released titles.

That's a VERY good start for them!

Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor and SpellRouge are both performing above expectations.
Survivor is even 'dwarfing' regular Deep Rock Galactic in concurrent users (Currently on 6490 CCU). Survivor was peaking at 23762 CCU within 24h.

Let's hope for repeated success!

[jonaz.dk]

The classic and brilliant PC game Star Control 2. Remade by fans as The Ur-Quan Masters more than 20 years ago has made it to Steam. Now know as Free Stars: The Ur-Quan Masters.

Free by the way!



The orginals 1 and 2 has been on GOG for a while
https://www.gog.com/en/game/star_control_i_ii