About Us

About Us

Who we are

We are a small team based primarily in Melbourne, Australia, with frequent collaborators located across the globe.

Kevin:
Hello there! My name is Kevin Luk, and I've worked as a film editor in the screen industry since 2015. Throughout my journey, I've had the privilege of being involved in some noteworthy projects, including actor/musician Guy Pearce's music video What Makes You Think (2018), collaborating on the successful Neighbours web series Erinsborough High (2019), which aired on Channel 5 in the UK and 10 Network locally. I received national award nominations for Best Editing for animated mini-series The Future of Everything (2023) and comedy short film Favourites (2024).

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.

Kevin:
I love everything with a decent story, and by that, I mean its narrative arc; beyond its lore and a bunch of background information. I really look up to game developers like Don't Nod for the narrative experiences in Life is Strange. The heaviness from the first instalment carried deeply into Before The Storm. TACOMA, SOMA, and The Talos Principles also given me many confronting perspective on humanity.

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.

We believe that game development is a passion and no money in the world can buy or replace that sort of passion. We are looking for people who know their own worth and have a clear understanding of what inspires them and why. We want to work with people who align with our short or long-term vision and goals; both inside and outside of work. Storytelling and emotion are key to our business; as such, we need people who are also on the same page.

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 focus on the PC (and Mac if feasible) market as those are people who invested in their equipment to play games. These are not players who play games just because their phones happen to be able to. These are people who find games an important part of life and culture overall. We want our game played by people who expect a journey, and can reflect on humanity and society from it. Consoles are the next step beyond that.

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.

Kevin:
Liquid Heart has always been the name that I have adopted in my creative pursuit: from my first band in school, to a media production house, and now a game development studio. The name was inspired from a lyric by a comedy duo Flight of the Conchord. There's a line in their song "I'm Not Crying" which goes: "You can't break my heart, it's liquid. It melted when I met you". Since then, the name has been a representation of the passion and burning desire to create meaningful experiences.