Vlambeer

Last updated

Vlambeer
Company type Private
Industry Video games
Founded1 September 2010;13 years ago (2010-09-01)
Founders
Headquarters,
Netherlands
Key people
  • Rami Ismail
  • Jan Willem Nijman
Products
Website vlambeer.com

Vlambeer is a Dutch independent video game developer based in Utrecht. Founded in 2010, the studio was composed of Rami Ismail and Jan Willem Nijman. The studio is 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. [1]

Contents

History

Vlambeer's Rami Ismail (left) and Jan Willem Nijman at the 2013 Game Developers Conference Vlambeer at GDC (cropped).png
Vlambeer's Rami Ismail (left) and Jan Willem Nijman at the 2013 Game Developers Conference

Vlambeer was founded in 2010 by Rami Ismail and Jan Willem Nijman after both dropped out from a game design course at the Utrecht School of the Arts. According to Ismail, they had been developing a game outside of the school, but when the school found out, the school demanded the rights to the game, which they refused, leading to their decision to drop out. [2] Ismail and Nijman began by working together to develop a prototype, initially created by Nijman, called "Crates from Hell". It was released on 11 May 2010 as Super Crate Box and earned the studio recognition in the form of an Independent Games Festival finalist position in the Excellence in Design category. [3] During the development of Super Crate Box, Vlambeer developed Radical Fishing . It was released in November 2010. Radical Fishing was the first of many games released by the studio under a "Not Vlambeer" label, which encompasses the studio's games that are developed for money or as an experiment.

Vlambeer was approached by publisher Devolver Digital to develop a game in the Serious Sam franchise. The studio and Devolver Digital agreed to develop and publish a turn-based role-playing game. The result, Serious Sam: The Random Encounter , was released on 24 October 2011. During the development of Serious Sam: The Random Encounter, Vlambeer released many small games, most notably Luftrauser. Vlambeer started development on an iOS version of Radical Fishing called Ridiculous Fishing . Development was halted after a San Francisco–based studio released a clone of Radical Fishing on iOS. This generated discussion about the cloning of video games and led Vlambeer to be somewhat of an icon on the topic. [4] The term "Vlambeer'd" was introduced by several media outlets. [5] In November 2013, the browser game Vlambeer Clone Tycoon was launched to provide a satirical comment on the issue of Vlambeer's cloning ordeals. [6]

In February 2012, Vlambeer released Gun Godz, a first-person shooter inspired by hip-hop, in collaboration with Brandon Boyer's Venus Patrol. [7] Ridiculous Fishing was nominated for the 2012 Independent Games Festival "Best Mobile" award. [8] At the conference where the award ceremony was held, Vlambeer released Yeti Hunter. [9]

On 2 December 2012, Vlambeer announced a sequel to Luftrauser called Luftrausers . On 19 December 2012, Vlambeer released the iOS version of Super Crate Box. Its success prevented the studio from going out of business due to the financial ramifications of the decreased motivation caused by the cloning incident. [10] On 14 March 2013, Vlambeer released Ridiculous Fishing on iOS after resuming its development.

In 2015, they experimented with live streaming their development process and had at one point over 12,000 paid subscriptions to their Twitch channel. [11] [12]

On 5 December 2015, Vlambeer released Nuclear Throne , a top-down shooter roguelike which had been in Steam's early access program since 2013. The game was released for Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita, receiving positive reviews from users. [13]

On 8 August 2016, Vlambeer announced 120 Years Of Vlambeer And Friends. Bringing back arcade games since 1896, an art and history book of the company written by Arjan Terpstra and published by Cook & Becker. [14]

Ismail received the Ambassador Award at the March 2018 Game Developers Choice Awards for his support of independent video game development through both Vlambeer and other activities. [15]

On 1 September 2020, the tenth anniversary of the studio's formation, Vlambeer announced that the studio would come to a close. Ismail and Nijman had made the decision a few weeks prior, having come to recognize they were moving in separate directions within the video game industry since 2016. They had plans to release a final game, Ultrabugs, which has yet to be released as of July 2024. [16] Ismail plans to continue to work on supporting advocacy for diversity within the video game industry while Nijman expects to continue to help develop smaller games similar to Minit with other teams. [17]

In April 2024, Ismail sold his shares of the company to Nijman, giving him 100% ownership. [18] Nijman reopened the studio, intending to release improvements to their existing games as well as to complete Ultrabugs after he finished his current unannounced project outside the Vlambeer label. [19]

Games

Related Research Articles

<i>Baldurs Gate</i> Franchise of fantasy role-playing video games

Baldur's Gate is a series of role-playing video games set in the Forgotten Realms Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting. The series has been divided into two sub-series, known as the Bhaalspawn Saga and the Dark Alliance, both taking place mostly within the Western Heartlands, but the Bhaalspawn Saga extends to Amn and Tethyr. The Dark Alliance series was released for consoles and was critically and commercially successful. The Bhaalspawn Saga was critically acclaimed for using pausable realtime gameplay, which is credited with revitalizing the computer role-playing game (CRPG) genre.

<i>Star Wars</i> video games Video games based on the Star Wars franchise

Over one hundred video games based on the Star Wars franchise have been released, dating back to some of the earliest home consoles. Some are based directly on films while others rely heavily on the Star Wars Expanded Universe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Video game clone</span> Video game that resembles another video game

A video game clone is either a video game or a video game console very similar to, or heavily inspired by, a previous popular game or console. Clones are typically made to take financial advantage of the popularity of the cloned game or system, but clones may also result from earnest attempts to create homages or expand on game mechanics from the original game. An additional motivation unique to the medium of games as software with limited compatibility, is the desire to port a simulacrum of a game to platforms that the original is unavailable for or unsatisfactorily implemented on.

Gamenauts is an independent game development studio based in Silicon Valley and founded in September 2005 by Stanley Adrianus, formerly of Yahoo! Games.

<i>Serious Sam: The Random Encounter</i> 2011 video game

Serious Sam: The Random Encounter is a 2011 role-playing and bullet hell game developed by Vlambeer and published by Devolver Digital. It follows Sam "Serious" Stone travelling to the future in search of his nemesis, Mental, teaming up with mercenaries on the way. The player controls Sam and his accomplices through confined levels, engaging in battles through random encounters. These pit the player characters against large waves of enemies, and the player controls the weapons and items each character uses against them in five-second turns.

<i>Super Crate Box</i> 2010 video game

Super Crate Box is a shoot 'em up and indie game by Vlambeer. It was first released for Microsoft Windows on 22 October 2010, and was followed with ports to Mac OS X on 26 November 2010, to iOS on 4 January 2012, and to PlayStation Vita on 3 October 2012. A Commodore 64 demake of the game was developed by Paul Koller, with music by Mikkel Hastrup, and published by RGCD as Super Bread Box on 22 October 2013.

<i>Ridiculous Fishing</i> 2013 video game

Ridiculous Fishing is a fishing video game developed and published by Vlambeer. In the game, players use motion and touch controls to catch fish and subsequently shoot them out of the sky for cash. The game was released for iOS on March 13, 2013, then later that year for Android.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rami Ismail</span> Dutch video game developer (born 1988)

Rami Ismail is a Dutch-Egyptian independent video game developer. He is further known for being a 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dutch Game Garden</span>

The Dutch Game Garden is a video game studio incubator which was launched in Utrecht, The Netherlands in 2008 using funding from the European Regional Development Fund. The organisation is the largest such program in the Netherlands.

<i>Luftrausers</i> 2014 video game

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.

<i>Nuclear Throne</i> 2016 video game

Nuclear Throne is a bullet hell roguelike video game developed by Vlambeer. Set in a post-apocalypse, players are tasked with killing enemies by using various weapons and characters' special abilities to progress through levels and eventually reach the titular Nuclear Throne. The game is widely known for its steep difficulty curve and fast-paced gameplay. Early prototypes of the game were distributed through Steam's early access program in 2013. Nuclear Throne was released for Linux, Microsoft Windows, OS X, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita in December 2015, for Nintendo Switch in March 2019, and for Xbox One in September 2021.

<i>Threes</i> 2014 video game

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, Windows Phone, and Windows. 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Greg Wohlwend</span> American video game developer

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Asher Vollmer</span> American indie video game developer (born 1989)

Asher Vollmer is an American indie video game developer. He created Puzzlejuice and Threes. Vollmer also worked on Guildlings and Beast Breaker.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zach Gage</span> American indie video game developer

Zach Gage is an independent video game programmer and designer based in New York City. He is known for his iOS games, including SpellTower.

<i>Engare</i> 2017 indie puzzle game by Iranian game designer

Engare is a puzzle game created by Iranian game designer Mahdi Bahrami and soundtracked by Mim Rasouli, playable on PC and MacOS. Describing itself as "a game about motion and geometry", Engare's design is based upon Islamic art and sacred geometry. The game consists of two gameplay modes: a puzzle-solving mode, where the player has to recreate shapes shown onscreen by placing a point on a moving object, akin to a Spirograph tool, and a free-form art tool allowing the player to design their own patterns. First prototyped in 2010, Engare was released in October 2017, and retails for $6.99 on Steam and Bahrami's website. The game's release was delayed by difficulties caused by international sanctions imposed upon Iran, making it difficult for Bahrami to travel and access resources.

<i>Spry Fox, LLC v. Lolapps, Inc.</i> 2012 American legal case

Spry Fox, LLC v. Lolapps, Inc., No. 2:12-cv-00147, was a court case between two video game developers, where Spry Fox alleged that the game Yeti Town, developed by 6waves Lolapps, infringed on their copyrighted game Triple Town. While the case was settled out of court, preliminary opinions by Judge Richard A. Jones affirmed that a video game's "look and feel" may be protected by copyright, affirming the federal district court decision in Tetris Holding, LLC v. Xio Interactive, Inc. from earlier the same year.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jukio Kallio</span> Finnish composer

Jukio Kallio is a Finnish composer, musician and game developer known for creating the soundtracks to Minit, Fall Guys, Nuclear Throne and Luftrausers. Kallio started making music in 2011 and created chiptune music on his own. He then met game developer and co-founder of former Dutch game studio Vlambeer, Jan Willem Nijman. Kallio collaborated with Nijman to develop and create the music to various titles made by Vlambeer. Kallio then collaborated with Daniel Hagström in 2020 to create the soundtrack to Fall Guys.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sarah Elmaleh</span> American voice actor

Sarah Horn Elmaleh is an American voice actor. She is known for her work in the indie video games Gone Home (2013) and Where the Water Tastes Like Wine (2018) and AAA titles such as Final Fantasy XV (2016), For Honor (2017), and Anthem (2019). Elmaleh became involved with the SAG-AFTRA union after she moved from New York City to Los Angeles in 2015. In 2019, she founded the multilingual, online games conference gamedev.world with game developer Rami Ismail.

References

  1. Frushtick, Russ (22 February 2012). "Cloning Case Files: Vlambeer". Polygon . Archived from the original on 20 May 2020. Retrieved 15 April 2020.
  2. Sarkar, Samit (14 February 2014). "Vlambeer: Just making games is the key to becoming successful". Polygon . Archived from the original on 31 January 2018. Retrieved 30 January 2018.
  3. The 14th Annual Independent Games Festival Finalists Archived 7 August 2016 at the Wayback Machine . Igf.com. Retrieved on 13 August 2012.
  4. Someone Else’s Solutions Archived 15 May 2012 at the Wayback Machine . PocketNext. Retrieved on 13 August 2012.
  5. SF Molyjam: A Tale Of Three Parkour Romances Archived 8 May 2012 at the Wayback Machine . Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Retrieved on 13 August 2012.
  6. Vlambeer Clone Tycoon Archived 17 December 2013 at the Wayback Machine . IndieStatik. Retrieved on 13 December 2013.
  7. VENUS PATROL: charting a new course for videogame culture by Brandon Boyer — Kickstarter Archived 11 May 2012 at the Wayback Machine . Kickstarter.com (7 September 2011). Retrieved on 2012-08-13.
  8. The 14th Annual Independent Games Festival Finalists Archived 8 December 2012 at the Wayback Machine . Igf.com. Retrieved on 13 August 2012.
  9. Vlambeer to release Yeti Hunter from GDC show floor Archived 15 June 2012 at the Wayback Machine . The Verge. Retrieved on 13 August 2012.
  10. Pitts, Russ (24 April 2013). "Cloned at Birth: The Story of Ridiculous Fishing". Polygon . Vox Media. Archived from the original on 5 June 2013. Retrieved 12 June 2013.
  11. Choudhary, Amita (March 2016). "How Gaming Will Change For The Better In 2016". Endgadget.com. Archived from the original on 26 April 2016. Retrieved 2 March 2016.
  12. "Vlambeer Twitch Profile". Twitch. Archived from the original on 6 March 2016. Retrieved 2 March 2016.
  13. "Nuclear Throne Reviews (PC)". Metacritic. Archived from the original on 11 March 2017. Retrieved 14 March 2017.
  14. "Announcement!". Vlambeer. 8 August 2016. Archived from the original on 9 August 2016. Retrieved 14 March 2017.
  15. "Nolan Bushnell, Tim Schafer, and Rami Ismail to be honored at the 2018 GDC Awards!". Gamasutra . 30 January 2018. Archived from the original on 30 January 2018. Retrieved 30 January 2018.
  16. Conduit, Jessica (1 September 2020). "Influential indie studio Vlambeer is shutting down after a decade". Engadget . Archived from the original on 1 September 2020. Retrieved 1 September 2020.
  17. Carpenter, Nicole (1 September 2020). "It's Vlambeer's 10-year anniversary, and the studio's breaking up". Polygon . Archived from the original on 2 September 2020. Retrieved 1 September 2020.
  18. "New Beginnings". Levelling The Playing Field. 4 April 2024. Retrieved 5 April 2024.
  19. Wales, Matt (4 April 2024). "Nuclear Throne studio Vlambeer details future as Rami Ismail sells shares". Eurogamer . Retrieved 4 April 2024.
  20. Crecente, Brian (1 April 2019). "Why Vlambeer Returned to Its Roots With 'Ultrabugs'". Variety . Archived from the original on 29 September 2019. Retrieved 15 April 2020.