VicScreen has announced the latest recipients of its Originate Games fund, with each provided community-based and monetary support to continue development on new, creative video games. As noted by VicScreen, this fund has been set up to aid developers in exploring new ideas, and eventually bring their titles to market.
Originate Games fills a much-needed gap in games funding initiatives, allowing for early stage projects to significantly advance through experimentation and prototyping – some of the most crucial stages of game development. It’s only with this space that developers can iterate on their most unique ideas, allowing for them to blossom into fully-fledged projects.
Many Originate Games recipients have been able to expand their projects into new creative works with this support, gathering further funding from VicScreen and other bodies, as their ambitions have grown beyond the prototyping stage. There’s high hopes those supported by the latest round will go on to do the same.
Read: Screen Australia announces funding for 26 new Aussie-made games
‘Victoria is home to a thriving games industry, with the largest number of games studios and the biggest games workforce in Australia,’ Colin Brooks, Minister for Creative Industries said in a press release. ‘Originate Games champions new games talent, supporting Victorians to create world-class content
that is innovative, educational and entertaining, and that our digital games sector is famous for.’
See also: VicScreen chooses 8 bold new feature projects for Originate Genre initiative
Per Caroline Pitcher, VicScreen CEO, ‘The creativity coming through Originate Games is nothingshort of electric. These developers are pushing boundaries and VicScreen is proud to champion bold ideas and help bring them to life.’
New titles funded by VicScreen’s Originate Games program
Games selected for VicScreen’s Originate Games program in its latest round include:
- Canvas Street (Leura Smith, Katsumi Yoshida) – ‘Canvas Street is a game about doing architecture. In the game, the player designs houses for a variety different clients, playing through the architectural design process one step at a time.’
- Dicot (Siobhan Dent, Zachariah Chandler, Twig Takac, Fentine Gard, Barroo) – ‘Dicot is a 2D sci-fi immersive sim about cave diving and devotion in the stars. Delve below the sentient planet of love, New Cytherea, in search of its many secrets.’
- Junkyard Zoo (Marc-O-Matic) – ‘Junkyard Zoo is a cosy process and assembly game about finding purpose in the discarded. Creating a Sanctuary of Mechanical Animalia and Temple of Lost Knowledge from the junk and scrap humanity left behind.’
- Little Magica (Rowan Clare, Susan Dang) – ‘Little Magica is a Magical Girl inspired Tactical role-playing game with an emphasis on enabling creative solutions and approaches to combat. It features a cast of nine young boys and girls on a coming-of-age story about community, wishes, and transformation.’
- Rawring Candies (Nizua Inas Alysha Binti Mohd Nizuaisham, Lori McLelland, Mishal Shameer) – ‘Rawring Candies is a couch co-op game for players looking for strategic confectionary chaos.’
You can look forward to seeing more from each of these projects in future.
Also on ScreenHub: Screen Australia is paving the way for future games industry leaders
There is a better future for the Australian games industry, beyond recent layoffs, studio downsizings, publisher absence, and closures. But it’s one that must be actively supported, with organisations like Screen Australia putting in the work to elevate creative projects, and ensure diverse stories are told.
Speaking to ScreenHub, the organisation’s new Head of Games, Joey Egger, spoke enthusiastically about that future, and how Screen Australia’s latest round of games funding highlights the company’s long-term goals to foster new talent and lay the brickwork for a stronger, more stable Australian games industry. Egger has taken the reins from former Head of Online and Games Lee Naimo, with the role expanded to focus solely on games.
