December 2, 2020
Going Live: What to expect from Games Lift Graduation
You can see it in their faces, hear it in their voices, even tell it by the way their e-mails are worded: Our teams are excited. And they have very good reason to. On December 8, the Incubator will end with a public presentation. What’s in store?
Time flies when you‘re busy. And since incubator programs are designed to accelerate development, our teams could not have been busier. So it’s perfectly normal to feel mildly shocked that we are already nearing the end of our first rodeo. Has it been three months already? It has.
The big finale is almost here. Our graduation event is scheduled for December 8. We don’t want to spoil the surprise, but we had to ask: What are the teams going to show? What are they planning?
Real New Stuff
Impawsible Games‘ Nico Plötz wants to go big. His 4-person team is working on the stylish metroidvania title „Jonah Weingarten’s Ninja Brigade“. The game is not about silent contemplation, rather about a keyboardist turned action hero who fights his way through a menacing, imaginative version of japanese folklore. Nico wants to fire on all cylinders: He’s excited to show his game to the public for the first time ever. He plans to show the game looking better than ever – he is teasing „graphical improvements“. And this is the first time we will get to see the official cover art for the game. Will it make us want to hang it on our wall? We will have to see for ourselves.
A big and substantial update is also in sight for Roman Fuhrer. His game „Leif’s Adventure“ is a well-known quantity, having been in development for over three years. To anyone skeptical that this single developer could actually produce a full-fledged action-adventure inspired by Nintendo classics, Roman has already proven what he’s capable of. The game has been demoed successfully at conventions and is available for free on Steam. Roman even rocked the milestone pitch by building the complete presentation as a playable level in his game. But now he wants to show us something completely new: The hub world. Literally the place holding his game together. „This has never been part of any presentation,“ he says.
A fuller picture
Ole Jürgensen keeps it playfully cryptic: „Woosh! Bam! Pow! We are playing with action figures,“ is all he wants to give away about what to expect from his presentation. Unless he and his teammate Leonie Brosz actually plan to do just that, our next best guess is that they might show us how their game evokes the sense of playing with them. „Crumbling“ is, after all, a VR game where the central allure lies in moving your character around naturally with motion controls and having it feel just like playing with a toy – but in a reactive game world.
Curvature Games‘ Dennis Briddigkeit wants to show us where the support of Gamecity Hamburg and the Games Lift Incubator has got his team and how they are starting to feel confident about „pitching the game to publishers soon“. The game in question is called „The Amusement“ – an ambitious, narrative VR adventure combining a unique historical setting, technical innovations and an arresting art style. There is good reason to be excited. The project is still at an early stage, but Curvature Games proved in their milestone pitch that they are making the best of their larger team size and progressing quickly.
Julia Reberg is sitting on the other end of that spectrum – while she is a gifted professional, she is working on „Alchymia“ alone. When the incubator started, her project was still in a very early concept phase. Now it is beginning to take shape. „I’m looking forward to putting all the pieces together and finally give a first impression of my game“, she says. The idea has always been enticing; a strategic roguelike where players have to master alchemy in order to stop a zombie horde. We are awaiting the fuller picture with baited breath.
Join us!
Our biggest source of excitement lies not in the presentation itself, not in the fact that a carefully selected group of industry veterans will be watching, but in you, the reader. The graduation event was always meant to be held in front of an audience. COVID-19 may make this physically impossible this year – but our virtual doors are open to all.
Join us on Tuesday, December 8, at 6 p.m.
Register on eventbrite:
