Double Fine Productions, Inc. is an American first-party video game developer of Xbox Game Studios based in San Francisco, California. Founded in July 2000 by Tim Schafer shortly after his departure from LucasArts, Double Fine's first two games – Psychonauts and Brütal Legend – underperformed publishers' expectations despite critical praise. The future of the company was assured when Schafer turned to several in-house prototypes built during a two-week period known as "Amnesia Fortnight" to expand as smaller titles, all of which were licensed through publishers and met with commercial success. Schafer has since repeated these Amnesia Fortnights, using fan-voting mechanics, to help select and build smaller titles. Double Fine is also credited with driving interest in crowdfunding in video games, having been able to raise more than US$3 million for the development of Broken Age, at the time one of the largest projects funded by Kickstarter, and more than US$3 million for the development of Psychonauts 2.
inXile Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer and a studio of Xbox Game Studios based in Tustin, California. Specializing in role-playing video games, inXile was founded in 2002 by Interplay co-founder Brian Fargo. The studio produced the fantasy games The Bard's Tale and Hunted: The Demon's Forge, along with various games for Flash and iOS such as Fantastic Contraption in its first decade of development. In 2014, inXile released the post-apocalyptic game Wasteland 2, following a successful Kickstarter campaign. Following the game's critical success, the studio went on to raise a then-record US$4 million on Kickstarter to develop Torment: Tides of Numenera, a spiritual successor to Interplay's Planescape: Torment. The studio was purchased by Microsoft and became part of Xbox Game Studios in 2018, just as they were developing Wasteland 3, which they released in 2020. The studio is currently developing Clockwork Revolution for Windows and Xbox Series X/S.
An indie role-playing game is a role-playing game published by individuals or small press publishers, in contrast to games published by large corporations. Indie role-playing game designers participate in various game distribution networks and development communities, both in person and online. Indie game designer committees grant annual awards for excellence.
Auditorium is a music-based puzzle game developed by Philadelphia-based studio Cipher Prime. Originally released as a Flash game in April 2008, Auditorium was later released for iOS devices and then the PlayStation 3 and PSP in 2010. It was also released in 2012 for PC and Mac OS X. In 2012, Cipher Prime launched a successful Kickstarter campaign for a sequel to Auditorium, titled Auditorium 2: Duet. However, on January 11, 2017, Cipher Prime announced to their Kickstarter backers that the game was cancelled.
Machinarium is a puzzle point-and-click adventure game developed by Amanita Design. It was released on 16 October 2009 for Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux, on 8 September 2011 for iPad 2 on the App Store, on 21 November 2011 for BlackBerry PlayBook, on 10 May 2012 for Android, on 6 September 2012 on PlayStation 3's PlayStation Network in Europe, on 9 October 2012 in North America and on 18 October 2012 in Asia, and was also released for PlayStation Vita on 26 March 2013 in North America, on 1 May 2013 in Europe and on 7 May 2013 in Asia. Demos for Windows, Mac and Linux were made available on 30 September 2009. A future release for the Wii's WiiWare service was cancelled as of November 2011 due to WiiWare's 40MB limit.
Humble Bundle, Inc. is a digital storefront for video games, which grew out of its original offering of Humble Bundles, collections of games sold at a price determined by the purchaser and with a portion of the price going towards charity and the rest split between the game developers. Humble Bundle continues to offer these limited-time bundles, but have expanded to include a greater and more persistent storefront. The Humble Bundle concept was initially run by Wolfire Games in 2010, but by its second bundle, the Humble Bundle company was spun out to manage the promotion, payments, and distribution of the bundles. In October 2017, the company was acquired by Ziff Davis through its IGN Entertainment subsidiary.
Mojang Studios is a Swedish video game developer based in Stockholm. The studio is best known for developing the sandbox and survival game Minecraft, the best-selling video game of all time.
Snuggle Truck is a side-scrolling driving/racing action game developed by Owlchemy Labs. Originally, the game was titled Smuggle Truck, and it involved smuggling immigrants across the United States border, but it was rejected by Apple's App Store due to its controversial subject matter. The characters were then swapped out for stuffed animals, with the game revolving around getting them into a zoo, and the game retitled Snuggle Truck in 2011. Since then, approximately 2 million copies have been downloaded for iOS, with 1.3 million downloads during the 9 days after going free-to-play. On March 26, 2012, both Snuggle Truck and Smuggle Truck were included in the Humble Bundle for Android 2, though the latter is only available on Android. Later on February 3 it was added to Steam.
Blendo Games is an American independent video game development company based in Culver City, California. It was founded by Brendon Chung in 2010 and is primarily a one-person effort. Blendo Games gained more widespread exposure with the short form stand alone title Gravity Bone; the following games Flotilla and Atom Zombie Smasher were met with critical praise. The studio has also released several other games in several genres.
The Ouya, stylized as OUYA, is an Android-based microconsole developed by Ouya Inc. Julie Uhrman founded the project in 2012, bringing in designer Yves Béhar to collaborate on its design and Muffi Ghadiali as VP of Product Management to put together the engineering team. Development was funded via Kickstarter, raising US$8.5 million, becoming one of the website's highest earning projects in its history.
Fist of Awesome is an independently developed video game by Nicoll Hunt funded through Kickstarter, and is described by the developer as a time-travelling-lumberjack-em-up. Hunt was one of ten indie game developers chosen via Twitter to receive Ouya consoles for development. Fist of Awesome is one of the ten pre-selected indie games to be made potentially available for the Ouya.
Star Command, is a video game developed initially for iOS, then later Android, and eventually PCs. The game is a space exploration and combat simulation game, with players acting as captain of a starship who is tasked with exploring the galaxy and defending his crew from hostile aliens.
Pulse is a music game developed by Philadelphia-based studio Cipher Prime. The game was released in 2011 for iPad and in 2013 for Android. In June 2013 it was offered along with Aquaria, Organ Trail, Stealth Bastard Deluxe, and Fractal as part of the Humble Bundle with Android 6.
A microconsole is a home video game console that is typically powered by low-cost computing hardware, making the console lower-priced compared to other home consoles on the market. The majority of microconsoles, with a few exceptions such as the PlayStation TV and OnLive Game System, are Android-based digital media players that are bundled with gamepads and marketed as gaming devices. Such microconsoles can be connected to the television to play video games downloaded from an application store such as Google Play.
InnoGames GmbH is a German video game developer and publisher based in Hamburg. Founded in 2007, it focuses on the development of free-to-play online browser and mobile games. The company reached a turnover of €220 million in 2020 and currently has ten live games.
Duet is a 2013 action game by Australian game developer Kumobius for iOS and Android. Players control two coloured orbs, guiding them to avoid incoming obstacles. Its Android version was first released as a part of Humble Mobile Bundle 6.
itch.io is a website for users to host, sell and download indie video games, indie role-playing games, game assets, comics, zines and music. Launched in March 2013 by Leaf Corcoran, the service hosts over 700,000 products as of April 2023.
IndieGala, s.r.l. is an Italy-based digital storefront for video games, which grew out of its original offering of Indie Gala Bundles, a collections of games sold at a price determined by the purchaser and with a portion of the price going towards charity and the rest split between the game developers. IndieGala continues to offer these limited-time bundles, but have expanded to include a greater and more persistent storefront.
