NEWS Umeå-based Zordix has won the international ‘Make 'em Up’ game development competition and the 65,000 euro prize for their Nintendo platform game Furiae. The development of the game was made in collaboration with Kalle Jegers, Department of Informatics at Umeå University.
The international ‘Make ' em Up’ competition aimed to fine more ideas to indie games market and is part of a long period of cooperation between German and Swedish Blue Systems Turborilla. Among the 27 international nominees, the winning game concept was by Zordix, with the game Furiae, which is described as a two dimensional adventure/role playing hybrid game.
“Furiae comes as a breath of fresh air to a genre has been somewhat stagnant. It has certainly managed to do something new with a nice balance of innovation and familiarity, " says Tobias Andersson, owner and founder of contest sponsor Turborilla.
Matti Larsson, CEO of Zordix, is convinced that the prize money will make it easier for the company to grow and employ more game developers and make even more games for the Nintendo platform. He also noted that they have worked with award-winning scriptwriters to make the games even better and gives tremendous credit to the collaboration with researchers at Umeå University for quality assurance of the games.
Umeå University’s Kalle Jegers, a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Informatics, has followed the development of Furiae quite closely.
“Collaboration with Zordix has given me the opportunity to follow a game development project from an early paper prototype to the digital beta version. I have had the opportunity to produce and publish research in gaming and interactive design and as a beneficial effect of this, Zordix has had their game prototype evaluated and quality assured in terms of playing experience in various phases of the development process,” says Kalle Jegers.
According to the competition rules, Zordix now has 15 months until the game will be released to the public in early 2012.
For more information:
About the Make 'em Up contest
About Turborilla
Turborilla AB is an independent game developer with offices in Umeå, Sweden, and was founded in 2006 by Tobias Andersson. The company works hard to bring joy into the gaming world and turn passion into games.
About Zordix
Zordix AB is an innovative game and application development company from Umeå in the north of Sweden, with special expertise in handheld games development. Services provided to our customers include design, animation, 3d modelling, programming, web, marketing, sales and CRM.
Kalle JegersSenior Lecturer, Department of Informatics, Umeå UniversityPhone: +46 (0)90 7866593
E-mail: kalle.jegers@informatik.umu.se
Editor: Karin Wikman