With big publishers currently doing their best to destroy the games industry, a reader lists seven smaller developers who are helping to make things better. The video game industry is facing plenty of problems right now, but there are still plenty of reasons to be excited about the future. Developers like Nintendo and FromSoftware will continue doing what they do best, and even the likes of Capcom are enjoying a renaissance, reviving beloved franchises alongside experimenting with new IPs like the entertaining Pragmata.
Beyond these big name studios, countless talented developers are quietly doing their thing and delivering some truly fantastic games. From ambitious indies to smaller studios punching well above their weight, there’s plenty to be excited about. Here are just a few of the developers giving us reason to feel optimistic.
11 bit studios
A Polish developer founded in 2010, 11 bit studios first came to prominence with the release of This War Of Mine in 2014, a game that showed the darker side of war that video games usually avoid and often forced players into making difficult decisions that went beyond the standard good vs. evil. Their next two games, both in the Frostpunk series, expanded these ideas to a larger scale and mixed city building with survival elements as the player attempted to keep the population alive in a world decimated by climate change.
Hot on the heels of this came The Alters, arguably their most ambitious project, which found a space miner trapped on an alien planet and having to do anything they could to survive. Having also helped publish some other small budget titles, including the very good Death Howl, it appears they’ll be returning to the world of Frostpunk for their next game.
AdHoc Studios
Founded by former Telltale Games staff, following the company’s bankruptcy in 2018, AdHoc Studios is an American video game developer that produced one of the best games of last year in Dispatch. Using what they learned from their years of working on narrative-focused adventures, they took the animation, script, and voice-acting to a whole new level and set a standard for the genre that will be hard to follow. Having announced a partnership with Critical Role Productions, they are now working on a game set in the fantasy world of Exandria.
Daniel Mullins Games
Daniel Mullins started his career by taking part in game jams – events where participants have to create a video game from scratch in a given period of time – before releasing his first commercial project Pony Island in 2016. Each of his subsequent games (The Hex and Inscryption) retained the same meta narrative and fourth wall breaking dimensions whilst experimenting with different genres, making for some of the most unique games of the last decade. With Pony Island 2 on the horizon, it seems Daniel Mullins isn’t out of ideas just yet.
Hazelight Studios
A Swedish developer founded in 2014, Hazelight Studios have found their own little niche with co-operative multiplayer games that generously only require one player to own the game. Starting with A Way Out, it was really It Takes Two and then Split Fiction that put them on the map with the inventive asynchronous powers given to each player keeping things fresh for the games run time. The success of Split Fiction in particular has secured their future, and they’ve announced that they’re now working on a new game.
Larian Studios
An independent studio from Belgium, Larian Studios is best known for creating role-playing games, since they were founded back in 1996. Having released numerous relatively well received titles in the Divinity series, it was Divinity: Original Sin and Divinity: Original Sin 2 that really saw Larian hone their craft before the incredible Baldur’s Gate 3 took the genre to a whole new level in terms of storytelling and player freedom. Having decided against creating any DLC for Baldur’s Gate 3, or a fourth title in the series, Larian have announced that they will be returning to the Divinity series.
Sandfall Interactive
A French video game development company founded in 2020 by former Ubisoft employees that had become disillusioned with working for a big studio, the heads of Sandfall Interactive immediately began working on a role-playing game that ‘they themselves would like to play.’ The result was, of course, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, a game with an immersive story, original combat system and incredible music that exceeded all expectations and swept up pretty much every video game award going last year. No announcement has been made as to what their next game will be, but rumours suggest it could be set in the same painted world as Clair Obscur.
Supergiant Games
An independent developer based in San Francisco, Supergiant Games cut their teeth with the well-received Bastion and Transistor before truly announcing themselves with Hades, arguably the best rougelike game ever made. Four years later they followed that up with Hades 2, which whilst following a very similar template refined the formula to make for another excellent title. They haven’t currently announced what their next game will be, but whether it’s Hades 3 or something new, I’ll be there on launch day. There are plenty of other developers I could have mentioned here, so let me know which studios you think are worth a mention.
