Xbox Game Studios is an American video game publisher and part of the Microsoft Gaming division based in Redmond, Washington. It was established in March 2000, spun out from an internal Games Group, for the development and publishing of video games for Microsoft Windows. It has since expanded to include games and other interactive entertainment for the namesake Xbox platforms, other desktop operating systems, Windows Mobile and other mobile platforms, and web-based portals.
A mobile game, or smartphone game, is a video game that is typically played on a mobile phone. The term also refers to all games that are played on any portable device, including from mobile phone, tablet, PDA to handheld game console, portable media player or graphing calculator, with and without network availability. The earliest known game on a mobile phone was a Tetris variant on the Hagenuk MT-2000 device from 1994.
Ninja Theory Limited is a first-party British video game development studio based in Cambridge, England. Notable games it has developed include Kung Fu Chaos, Heavenly Sword, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, DmC: Devil May Cry and Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice.
An indie game, short for independent video game, is a video game typically created by individuals or smaller development teams without the financial and technical support of a large game publisher, in contrast to most "AAA" (triple-A) games. Because of their independence and freedom to develop, indie games often focus on innovation, experimental gameplay, and taking risks not usually afforded in AAA games. Indie games tend to be sold through digital distribution channels rather than at retail due to lack of publisher support. The term is synonymous with that of independent music or independent film in those respective mediums.
Exient Entertainment is an independent video game developer and publisher based in the United Kingdom and Malta. Mainly developing for handheld gaming systems, Exient grew a name for itself shrinking popular series' games to portable systems. It is known for its ports of various games in the Madden NFL, FIFA, Need for Speed, and Tiger Woods PGA Tour series for Electronic Arts and for developing numerous titles in the Angry Birds series. The company was incorporated in 2000 and began operations in January 2001.
indiePub Entertainment, Inc. was a publisher of video games based in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States.
Alawar Entertainment is an international developer and publisher of video games for PC, mobile platforms, games consoles and other devices based in Lewes, Delaware. Its main areas of activity are mid-core games for experienced players, as well as casual downloadable and F2P games for PC, MacOS, IOS, Android, PlayStation (console), Xbox, social networks, and other platforms.
Spacetime Studios (STS) is a games development studio, based in Austin, Texas. Founded in 2005 by a small group of PC MMO game developers. The start-up was created with the aim to create Sci-Fi MMOs for the PC market.
Devolver Digital, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Austin, Texas, specializing in the publishing of indie games. The company was founded in June 2009 by Nigel Lowrie, Harry Miller, Graeme Struthers, Rick Stults, and Mike Wilson, five executives who had been involved with Gathering of Developers and Gamecock Media Group, which published games on developer-friendly terms, but due to the high cost associated with releasing retail games saw themselves acquired and dissolved by larger companies. To avoid this, Devolver Digital instead turned to digital distribution channels.
Vlambeer was a Dutch independent video game developer based in Utrecht. Founded in 2010, the studio was composed of Rami Ismail and Jan Willem Nijman, and closed down on its tenth anniversary after the two recognized they were moving in different directions. The studio was known for the games Super Crate Box (2010), Serious Sam: The Random Encounter (2011), Ridiculous Fishing (2013), Luftrausers (2014), and Nuclear Throne (2015), as well as for their stand against video game cloning.
Video games in Ukraine began to emerge in the 1990s, with the appearance of the first studios. Subsequently, in the 2000-2010 in Ukraine there were several well-known video game series. Although the video game industry in Ukraine is only developing, video gaming is becoming more and more popular in the country.
Ridiculous Fishing is a mobile fishing video game where players use motion and touch controls to catch fish and subsequently shoot them out of the sky for cash. The game is known for its developers' battle against a cloned version of their game released by another company. The game was developed and published by Vlambeer—Rami Ismail and Jan Willem Nijman—and released for iOS on March 13, 2013, and later that year for Android.
Rami Ismail is a Dutch independent video game developer and spokesperson within the video game industry on the topics of diversity and reaching out to game developers from developing countries. He co-founded the studio Vlambeer with Jan Willem Nijman in 2010, where they developed games such as Ridiculous Fishing, Luftrausers, and Nuclear Throne.
Luftrausers is a shoot 'em up video game developed by Netherlands-based indie developer studio Vlambeer and published by Devolver Digital for Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita. It was released in March 2014 and ported to Android by General Arcade on May 28, 2015. A demake of the game, titled LuftrauserZ, was developed by Paul Koller for Commodore 64, Commodore 128 and Commodore 64 Games System, and released by RGCD and Vlambeer on December 8, 2017.
Threes is a puzzle video game by Sirvo, an independent development team consisting of game designer Asher Vollmer, illustrator Greg Wohlwend, and composer Jimmy Hinson. The game was released on February 6, 2014, for iOS devices and later ported to Android, Xbox One, and Windows Phone. In Threes, the player slides numbered tiles on a grid to combine addends and multiples of three. The game ends when there are no moves left on the grid and the tiles are counted for a final score.
Greg Wohlwend is an American independent video game developer and artist whose games include Threes! and Ridiculous Fishing. He originally formed Intuition Games with Iowa State University classmate Mike Boxleiter in 2007 where they worked on Dinowaurs and other small Adobe Flash games. Trained as an artist, Wohlwend worked mainly on the visual assets. As Mikengreg, they released Solipskier, whose success let the two take a more experimental approach with Gasketball, which did not fare as well. At the same time, Wohlwend collaborated with Asher Vollmer to make Puzzlejuice, and with Adam Saltsman to make Hundreds based on Wohlwend's first game design. He later released Threes! with Vollmer in 2014 to critical acclaim. His later games TouchTone and TumbleSeed were also the products of collaborations. Wohlwend was named among Forbes' 2014 "30 under 30" in the games industry.
Ketchapp SARL is a French video game publisher based in Paris, specializing in the mobile games market. Founded in 2014 by brothers Antoine and Michel Morcos, the company first came into the public eye later that year, through its port of the open-source game 2048. Ketchapp has been accused of cloning popular casual games by other developers. When Ketchapp was acquired by Ubisoft in September 2016, the company had more than 700 million downloads across their portfolio of games.
Grip Digital is a developer and publisher of video games based in Prague, Czech Republic. It focuses on developing and publishing video games. Its main focus are consoles.
Zach Gage is an indie video game developer based in New York City and best known for his iOS games, including SpellTower.
Voodoo SAS is a French video game developer and publisher based in Paris. The company was founded in 2013 by Alexandre Yazdi and Laurent Ritter. Voodoo's games, predominantly free-to-play "hyper-casual games", have been collectively downloaded 5 billion times as of May 2021. By February 2022, their apps surpassed 6 billion installs. The company has been criticised for cloning other games.
