The Year In Review 2019
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It’s the end of another year and we’re in a reflective mood, looking back on all the things we’ve been up to over the course of the year of our lord Cthulhu, twenty nineteen.
Can you believe we released five games this year!?!?
Achtung! Cthulhu Tactics slithered onto Switch
Way back in the mists of time - the end of January, to be precise - the Nintendo Switch version of our turn-based tactics game joined its counterparts on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC.
We were pretty pleased with how this portable version turned out and, honestly, it might just be the best way to play it. A nice ending to a project that absorbed a lot of our attention in 2018.
We set off on our journey to space, with Mars Horizon: Blast Off!
In February we ran a Kickstarter for our space-themed card game, Mars Horizon: Blast Off!
Very much its own separate thing from the Mars Horizon video game - more on that later - the card game is a lightweight and fun game to share with friends. We had a great time playtesting it in the studio and have been really pleased to see players enjoying it after we shipped in November.
Dark Future drove on home
In the making since 2014, in 2019 we delivered Dark Future to PC.
First there was the beta, then the full launch, plus a Developer’s Archive showing progress on the game, and the soundtrack. Then we dropped six updates to the main game that brought a brand new gang, achievement progress tracking, balance refinement, bug fixes, and a bunch of QOL items requested by players.
First available on Steam, then through Humble, and more recently over on GOG, Dark Future was also nominated for a TIGA Award.
We ported and published Megaquarium to consoles
We were honoured to be given the responsibility of porting one of our favourite tycoon management games from PC to consoles - the delightfully fishy Megaquarium from Twice Circled.
Currently our joint best critically received game, the team did a superb job of translating the keyboard and mouse inputs to a controller, and making sure everything ran nice and smooth for console gamers eager to dip their toes into running an aquarium.
We got way into the whole “fish are amazing” thing, as our visit to the National Marine Aquarium and the accompanying gallery of images attests. We also worked on partnerships with the Tropical Marine Center and Bristol Aquarium to create loads of fun videos to celebrate the release of the game.
There’s Death on the Cards with Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie - Death on the Cards, our second tabletop game of the year, was with our friends at Modiphius and based on the works of Agatha Christie.
It was at UK Games Expo, it was at Gen Con, it was at Spiel, and now it’s at your FLGS and all good book stores, just in time for a post-Christmas dinner game of accusing your loved ones of being ruthless killers.
It’s a playful social deduction game with your favourite characters from the author’s mighty library of works and we’re so excited to see what you make of it.
Thanks for taking part in the alpha!
Mars Horizon pre-flight checks
Our next big own-IP game - Mars Horizon - continued development through 2019 and everything is gearing up for take off in 2020.
We gave everyone the chance to try out our Alpha of the game, and over 1500 of you, from all over the world, signed up to tell us what you thought. It sounds like we’ve been heading in the right direction, and the detailed feedback provided has gone on to shape development - a thoughtful little tweak here, a greatly expanded feature there.
We also announced our partnership with the European Space Agency, which, honestly, was a bit of a dream come true.
We doubled down on podcasting
This year the podcast went from strength-to-strength, covering a diverse array of subjects, as we began to feel our feet for what you wanted us to talk about.
There was coverage of the Global Game Jam in Bristol, our visit to the ESA, a deep dive into Games Workshop’s cult classic Chainsaw Warrior, a series on car combat and the roots of Dark Future, a history of Cthulhu video games, and we even talked about games we never ended up making.
New people joined us
We were joined by Jem (Marketing and Community Manager), Charlie (Programmer), Joel (Programmer), Stefan (Programmer), Ruth (Admin Assistant), and Sam (QA and Designer) for our projects this year.
It’s been brilliant watching this talented bunch settle in on their various projects, and our team for 2020 is made up of some of the South West’s absolute finest.
And more!
We wrote about subscription services and how they’ll affect the games industry over on PC Games Insider, did a talk about digital discovery at PC Connects, spoke at Gamescom Congress about making humanity a multiplanetary species, and went on Modiphius Calling to chat Christie and Cthulhu.
There’s probably some stuff we’ve missed too, and of course there was the usual load of behind-the-scenes stuff that you might be reading about in our next one of these annual blog posts.
All in all though, it’s been a great year. We’ve worked on some fascinating projects, shipped games we’ve been hard at work on for a very long time, published other studio’s games, worked with publishers to publish our games - the works.
And we couldn’t have done any of this without you. A big high five from the whole team to everyone who has bought and played our games over 2019, and gave us useful feedback on our work. An extra special thank you to those that we’ve been chatting with us on our Discord server and keep us motivated for the stuff we’re working on now.
See you in 2020!