Project Category: Round 2

Jack the Ripper: Shadow Over Whitechapel is a playable documentary from the team behind the Game The News Initiative – acclaimed developer Auroch Digital – responsible for such groundbreaking titles as Endgame: Syria and NarcoGuerra. The experience transports the player to 1888, where London is plagued by massive inequality, rapid social change, and stalked by the world’s most infamous serial killer. It combines facts and documents from the real world murders, with immersive storytelling told through the lens of bleeding edge virtual reality, challenging players to see past the myths and confront the cold hard realities of 19th Century Britain.

Personal Development and Entertainment have traditionally been mutually exclusive concepts but we at Kinesthetic Games believe it doesn’t have to be that way. We’ve set out to prove this with our innovative concept for a virtual reality martial arts simulator that literally turns you into the next Bruce Lee, entertaining and developing you in equal measure. It’s an ambitious goal, that’s been made that much more attainable for us with the UK Games Fund committee’s vote of confidence, which we are absolutely delighted and honoured to have received

PLAIN SIGHT ARENA is the long awaited sequel to the indie hit Plain Sight. A multiplayer battle game where robots chase, slash and dash at each other on arenas in space. Players free-run, wall-run and double jump in low-gravity levels to engage in epic sword duels and lighting-fast killing sprees. Perk and customisation systems guarantees every player gets to play the game their way. The gravity is akin to Mario Galaxy, where leaping over planets and slingshotting round buildings is possible. The combat system is a locking on, chasing and attacking, with well timed blocking, countering and parrying. Keep moving, staying still just makes you more of a target!

Forest of Sleep is a procedurally generated graphical storytelling game, inspired by Eastern European folktales. The game is beautifully hand-illustrated and animated, with a specially commissioned soundtrack of regional folk music. Forest of Sleep will combine centuries-old ideas of folk tale plot, structure and character with frameworks for procedurally generating stories — each play through you make decisions that the game plays with to build your individual story. This playful collaboration is driven by an ambitious system that works with the player to produce stories and situations that follow similar patterns – as in folktales – but satisfyingly different and surprising each time.

Frozen Synapse 2 is the sequel to the award-winning turn-based tactical game. Command your squads in a vast procedurally generated city: enter any building, perform any mission, execute any strategy. Interact with AI factions and forge your own power balance in this unique single player and multiplayer experience. Frozen Synapse 2 features a vast procedurally generated city. Enter any building, engage any target anywhere on the map…you define your own strategy. The city is a living system, with many AI-controlled factions vying for control. Each faction has its own personality and behaviour; each responds differently to your actions.

SwapBots bridges the gap between physical and digital play by using an ordinary smartphone or tablet to bring the accompanying toys to life using augmented reality. This application of accessible yet sophisticated mobile augmented reality allows the creation of a video game world around the toy and shifts many of the game’s interactions away from the screen and into the real world. The turn-based battle is simple to play yet difficult to master with thousands of gameplay variations thanks to the customisable toys. Swapping a piece of the toy affects the on-screen gameplay making for a whole new way to engage with a video game.

Acid Nerve’s next game is a new IP in the action/adventure genre, which follows on in the trajectory set by our debut game, Titan Souls. We will build upon the strengths we developed in 1 on 1 combat design and atmospheric world-building, while expanding the scope, adhering to modern production values and introducing engaging characters and story. This is presented in an all-new art-style and tone, taking inspiration from a wider variety of sources, which we look forward to showcasing further into development.

Brightrock Games is an independent video game studio based in Brighton, UK, with a core team of ten people from all around the world. We’re gamers first and foremost, and we’re making games for people just like us. Our goal is to create genre-twisting simulation games, and if we can do it with a quirkily British sense of humour, then all the better!

Our first release, War for the Overworld, is a highly-praised dungeon management game which launched in 2015 for PC. It was a runaway success on Kickstarter, and continues to grow and attract new players. We’re also now hard at work on our next title: watch this space!

Take command of an ‘Age of Sail’ ship and her crew, exploring a vast, story-filled world that reacts to your decisions. Engage enemy vessels, fortifications and sea monsters in brutal tactical combat, all framed in an art style inspired by classic Naval Oil Paintings.