We are a small team based primarily in Melbourne, Australia, with frequent collaborators located across the globe.
Kevin:Gaming has always been a passion of mine, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic when I found solace in exploring games as a medium for storytelling. I'm excited to bring my filmmaking background to the realm of gaming, hoping to create emotional journeys for players, not unlike the impact films have on their audience.
My focus in game development is production management.
We see ourselves as a social enterprise - our games have a strong focus on promoting empathy and understanding by celebrating the shared values and kindness that transcends cultures. In an increasingly online world, we often find ourselves losing our ability to empathise and connect with others in the real world. Our games focus on meaningful interactions between players and NPCs (non-player characters), providing a safe space to learn positive social behaviours they can apply to interactions with real people online.
As independent game developers, we aim to build our studio to a point where we can generate a substantial portion of our income from selling our games through online platforms like Steam, not relying on government grants for funding.
We're a bare bones team with a flat structure. Story is at the heart of everything we do, so each project begins with the writer as the project lead, and the programming lead and art lead collaborating directly with the writer with a game-jam approach to rapidly prototype and iterate production, applying Agile methodology. We encourage experimentation and short feedback loops between the leading crew members to create a game that we’re all passionate about. It’s only at the production stage where we transition into a larger, more traditional team structure with additional team members and contractors; all working towards a pre-defined and well tested vision evolved throughout the prototyping stage.
We encourage our team members to continue work on any personal projects and even support them with resources where applicable.
Bedtime Stories is a wholesome 2D platformer with fun, forgiving combat where you play as the imaginary heroes in Cantonese and Indonesian fairytales. Face creatures inspired by Traditional Puppet Theatre, only to realise that the allies you form along the way are much more powerful. This game is funded by Screen Australia.
We believe a good game creates transformative change in the player, no matter how small. The stories we tell are the reflection of reality, and our games are story-first. We want to present the varied experiences of fictional characters in a succinct way where player can learn about themselves, each other and the world.
In an increasingly online era, we often find ourselves losing the ability to empathise and connect with others in real life. Our games focus on meaningful interactions between players and NPCs (non-player characters), providing a safe space to learn positive social behaviours they can apply to interactions with others online. We want to promote empathy and understanding by celebrating the shared values and kindness that transcends cultures.
Every member of our team can pitch ideas to each other in a game-jam manner, and the writer will then decide if there's enough of a story before we commit team resources to making a game.
Once the writer has completed a pitch, we will review and approve resources to the game if it aligns with our studio's vision and values. Once a prototype is completed, we will also re-evaluate if we will go into full production or shelve the project.
We want players to finish our games with a bittersweet feeling of separation, and a sense of accomplishment mixed with sorrow now that their relationship with the characters and the world has come to an end.
We hope to be always lean and agile. Even if we got a hit, we would keep the initial game-jam like approach to new ideas, to allow the raw chemistry of people coming together for prototyping. We believe that no matter how good the track record of a company is, no one will be able to predict the market and demand accurately, so we embrace uncertainty and experimentation.
We also have no ambition in publishing or incubating other company's game. If we have spare resources, we will either dedicate those to our team's well being and personal project, or we can hire people out to help smaller development companies.
Our strategy in the moment is to get a major project up with the help of Epic Mega Grant or Screen Australia. We do not aim for smaller productions nor in-game purchases. We also aim to work with larger publisher instead of self-publishing. We are open to any exclusive deals including Xbox Game Pass. Our first priority is to invest in our reputation in the game industry.