Screen Australia has announced the recipients of AUD $2 million worth of new games investment, with 12 in-development games set to be supported through the national Games Production Fund, and an additional 27 games supported through the Emerging Gamemakers Fund. Three games-focussed events will also be supported through the dedicated Games Event Fund.
These individual funds were established to support independent gamemakers in Australia, with projects under an AUD $500,000 budget eligible. The idea is to promote the sharing of culture and creativity in the medium of games, allowing developers to bring their brightest ideas into the world. The program is part of the Australian government’s National Cultural Policy, which provided Screen Australia with AUD $12 million to support countrywide game development over four years.
“This significant investment highlights our ongoing commitment to fostering growth and innovation within Australia’s games industry,” Deirdre Brennan, CEO of Screen Australia said in a press release. “By supporting these projects and industry events, we’re nurturing local developers and small to medium studios, reinforcing our position as a global leader in independent game-making.”
Read: What video game funding really means for local Australian developers
Minister for the Arts Tony Burke has also confirmed these funds are part of a federal government commitment to “nurturing emerging talent in this booming field.”
Screen Australia reportedly received over 370 applications for funding in this round, twice as many as in 2023. A handful of projects have been carefully selected to receive funding, with the following new games set to be supported in their creative journeys.
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Projects newly-supported by the Games Production Fund
- Frogreign (Arkanpixel) – “Join frog prince Rill in this amphibious adventure where your tongue is your grappling hook!”
- Zodaic Mountain (Mystic Road) – “Zodiac Mountain is a roguelike-deckbuilding game following the journey of a Panda as they embark on an adventure to become a Chinese Zodiac.”
- Cozy Commons (PixelCake) – “Life sim where everyone you come across has a backstory to be uncovered. Your challenge is to find a way to get each character to open up to you.”
- Paper Plague (Studio Squish) – “Play as a Toilet Paper Roll in this cute Platformer to save your Friends!”
- Doggy Don’t Care (Rotub Games) – “Unleash adorable chaos as a mischievous pup!”
- Matchstick (Technomyth) – “A time and ppace bending cosmic intelligence has found its way to Earth. Your family has been taken. Face the horrors of a twisted world and fight off the infected to save your family.”
- Spellbound Shire (Maxart) – “A cozy worldbuilding VR game where you build tiny terrariums with islands filled with magical creatures.”
- Split Signal (Worm Club) – “Split Signal is a new puzzle game where players traverse a vast landscape filled with hundreds of tetromino inspired puzzles and fix something that has broken.”
- Insignia (Uppon Hill) – “An apprentice blacksmith walks the path of his lost father in search of a way to meet a foreign threat on his homeland.”
- Salvage (Strings Attached Studios) – “Lost adrift in an asteroid belt, Salvage has you play as a group of stranded AI fighting desperately to disagree with each other on how to return home, whilst under threat from a corporate mining operation that has been unearthing things best left unseen.”
- Cooperative Space Survival Game – Working Title (Escape Pod Games) – “Embark on an epic journey across the galaxy in this 1-4 player first person co-op survival game.”
- Jupiter Junkworks (Pixel Drake) – “A fast paced new take on the arcade puzzle genre featuring a narrative campaign mode where you rebuild a spaceship salvage yard.”
Projects newly-supported by the Emerging Gamemakers Fund
- Project Backbone (Alex Murphy) – “Zeke, a technomancer and Percy, an alchemist climb a growing tower.”
- Anura (Alexnader Dorian Palegeorge) – “Follow a mysterious frog to the top of The Forgotten Mountain, using creativity, strategy, and magic to form a path up the mountainside and restore its natural glowing habitat.”
- Sinew (Odd Critter Games) – “Play as a biomechanical aquatic creature as you venture into the mysterious, horrid depths of a cold and threatening abyss in this dark adventure game.”
- Rocketcard Defence (Space Dragon Games T/A SD Games) – “Rocketcard Defence is a roguelite deckbuilding tower defence with a retro futurist vibe.”
- Direwind: Garden of Egan (Palliat) – “Join Egan on a 2D platforming adventure to rescue a team of explorers in a perilous jungle, as an unrelenting magic stirs to life.”
- Project Dairy Cat (Wali Studios) – A deckbuilding tactics heist game set in a sci-fi future.
- Bes Mora: Unsettling Wellness (Fuzzy Ghost and Georgia and Patch Harrison) – “A found footage investigation involving a cursed wellness app, and the strange disappearance of successful male fitness influencer Jaylen Booker.”
- Pixel Wizards – Working Title (Caspar Georgius Johannes Krieger) – “A spell-casting platformer where all of the levels and the spells themselves are individually simulated pixels.”
- Frame by Frame (Paper Giant Games) – “Frame by Frame is a fusion between a Fighting Game and a Trading Card game.”
- Monster Snap (Moo Duck Games / Clinton Ellard) – “Monster Snap is an on-rails VR photography game filled with elusive, mythical creatures such as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, and Dracula.”
- LunaGenesis (Michaela Jayne Vranic-Peters) – “Escape a tranceland filled with magical eggs and dreamers trapped by a shapeshifting witch.”
- Momentum Knight (Jett Overton) – “You play as a disciple set out for revenge to reclaim your humanity in this medieval movement-based action platformer.”
- Necromancer for a Week (Josh Salske) – “Reanimate a team of critters, choose their ideal moveset and form the best 3-monster-team you can to dominate in epic turn-based battles.”
- Bumper Bout (Rocco Loria) – “Bump about with a friend in Bumper Bout.”
- Yakshini Lokam (Orlando Mee) – “A whimsical fantasy couch co-op with strategy and puzzle elements, affirming the ancient Indian origins of a classic board game.”
- Humanoib (Joshua Alan Bradbury) – “Create a little guy out of a jumble of body parts to compete and win the approval of your dad, the Universe.”
- Management in Space (Silver Stitch Productions) – “Build your space station, then defend, profit, die, and repeat until the universe collapses.”
- Aussie Rules (David Ashby) – “Aussie Rules is a sports party roguelite fusing unpredictable action-packed gameplay with absurd Aussie humour.”
- Mist Forge (LunarCorp) – “Shape worlds and battle The Mist in Mist Forge, a turn-based roguelike adventure where strategic terraforming meets mystical challenges in an ever-changing, mist-shrouded landscape.”
- L8r Sk8r (Alexander Driml) – “A roller-skating, time-travel game with ‘speedrunning for everyone’ gameplay and a nostalgic, late 90s/early 2000s aesthetic.”
- Kamata (Neesh Group) – “In Kamata, join Nia, a spirited child on an epic quest to clean up the planet, one piece of plastic at a time.”
- Alexithymia (Natalie Jeffreys) – “Alexithymia is a wholesome and accessible simulation of life with the condition Alexithymia, an impaired ability to be aware of, explicitly identify, and describe your feelings.”
- The Troll and the Witch’s House (Ditte Wad Andersen) – “A little troll awakens to find themselves captured in a strange house.”
- Night Shift (Georgina Owassapian) – “Arriving on New Years Day 1999, a vampire from a century ago must reconcile with the changing landscape of the world as she overcomes her murky past that threatens to pull her under.”
- The Unforeseen Resurrection – Otome Isekai RPG (Naneth Sayao T/A Inuneko Nanita) – “A 3D open-world farming RPG with life-sim elements and otome isekai themes.”
- Jammed (team WHIRLIGIG) – “Set in a run-down ‘heritage’ apartment block, players must abide the absurd and ever-increasing rules set by their landlord.”
- Feral Scape (Jospeh Dowsett) – “Feral Scape is an open-world fantasy RPG set in an Australian-inspired landscape, where player choices drive exploration, crafting, and game modding.”
You can view the full details of the latest round of Screen Australia funding on its website.
