Ronimo Video games, the Dutch developer behind indie hit Awesomenauts, filed for bankruptcy in August last year. In the present day, 4 former members of the staff – together with the CEO – return with a brand new studio, Rangatang.
Not solely that, the quartet is already exhausting at work on Nubs, the sport Ronimo by no means obtained the possibility to complete.
Co-founder Olivier Thijssen tells GamesIndustry.biz that Ronimo’s chapter adopted the surprising cancellation of a publishing deal. The Awesomenauts studio had „fairly a vibrant historical past“ of slender escapes, however this was one setback the staff could not survive.
„There have been a number of moments the place we went by a keyhole or simply about survived,“ he explains. „Simply earlier than the discharge of Awesomenauts was one such second. The writer truly went bankrupt two weeks earlier than [the game] launched.
„However [Ronimo’s bankruptcy] was a second the place the keyhole was just a bit bit too small. We had a publishing take care of a famend writer whose identify I shall not point out as a result of the chapter remains to be in progress. However the sport was shaping up very effectively, we had been joyful, the writer was very joyful – after which lightning struck. They knowledgeable us that they had been shutting down a European department of their organisation. We needed to search for cash elsewhere to fund the remainder of the sport.“
The deal was scrapped shortly earlier than GDC 2023, when Ronimo’s indie brawler Nubs was mid-development and solely half funded. Thijssen and his staff managed to safe round 40 conferences on the San Francisco convention and got here near signing a brand new publishing deal, with one even involving the acquisition of the studio, however each fell by on the final second.
Wider strikes within the business did not assist issues. Thijssen factors to the information from Embracer that adopted shortly after, by which the group lost a crucial deal of its own and began a restructuring process that led to multiple studio closures, sales, and over 1,000 layoffs. He says he noticed it for instance of the „doom and gloom on the horizon.“
„On the larger ranges on the traders‘ facet, there was a number of angst at that second and a number of traders had been trying ahead, pondering ‚Wait a minute, if these different traders are going to be falling over, there’s going to be a number of low cost stuff that we are able to purchase in half a yr‘,“ he says. „This made the whole market very reluctant to fund something. We’re nonetheless in that state of affairs now, however again then it was fairly horrible.
„So although we had a really good sport in improvement, we had a brilliant good pitch, an especially gifted staff, and a number of superior stuff, we weren’t in a position to make it occur earlier than our time was up. Sooner or later, the cash simply ran out and it’s important to pull the set off.“
Ronimo Video games had round 25 workers by the top, all of whom confronted the unenviable seek for new roles in a market that had already seen tens of 1000’s of pros laid off in simply two years. Two members of the staff – lead programmer Maarten van den Heijkant and lead core tech programmer Machiel van Hooren – started discussing concepts for reviving the unfinished Nubs. They had been eager to have Thijssen on board for, however the CEO was targeted on closing the studio and all of the processes concerned on this.
In September 2023, a month after submitting for chapter, Thijssen and the 2 programmers made a bid for the Nubs IP from their very own financial savings, eager to see if they might end the undertaking. The next month, their bid was profitable and „the concept practice started to roll.“
Sadly, this was not a case of merely selecting up the place they left off. Nubs was „a brilliant advanced half-finished sport with a number of wires protruding all over the place“ with as much as 700 man hours poured into it. The brand new staff was simply three folks – later 4 after hiring Ronimo artist Gijs Witkamp to keep up Nubs‘ quirky visible fashion – who needed to work out the best way to adapt the undertaking.
„Although we had a really good sport in improvement, we weren’t in a position to make it earlier than our time was up. Sooner or later, the cash simply ran out and it’s important to pull the set off“
Olivier Thijssen, Rangatang
This primarily got here all the way down to reducing components of the sport that „we might by no means be capable to full with a staff of lower than 25 or 30 folks,“ Thijssen says. For instance, the cartoony brawler was initially designed as an enormous top-down world that gamers might discover, whereas the Rangatang model of Nubs is now cut up throughout smaller arenas with extra concentrate on rounds-based competitors.
„We’re solely going to make use of one of the best points of the sport and see how we are able to leverage that optimally,“ Thijssen explains. „That was truly fairly good to do as a result of you’ll be able to shortly make very massive choices.“
Nonetheless, Nubs‘ destiny this time will not be solely reliant on the Rangatang quartet. The brand new studio has teamed up with one other four-person studio, Belgium-based developer Glowfish Interactive, in a co-development deal to assist deliver the sport to completion.
Co-founder and technical artist Emiel Da Paepe tells GamesIndustry.biz he first realized of Thijssen and his staff throughout talks with an area enterprise capital agency about potential investments.
„I obtained a name saying, ‚Hey, these guys are on the lookout for additional bandwidth, [could you] see if there’s any potential for collaboration?'“ he says. „So we did that in February [2024], we went over to the Netherlands, performed the sport, had a chat, and we hit it off fairly effectively. In a number of points, now we have a really comparable imaginative and prescient in terms of what makes a sport cool. After which step by step that developed into the collaboration that now we have happening now.“
The essential expertise Glowfish brings to the desk is its years of working with Unity, on which Nubs is now being constructed. Ronimo had beforehand at all times used proprietary know-how for its video games, so there have been complementary skillsets that may permit the 2 studios to assist one another out.
„We performed it at their workplace and we had been like, ‚OK, that is simply good strong enjoyable‘,“ De Paepe continues. „Based mostly on learnings we had from our earlier title Trifox – which was a single participant sport however had the same method of very modular gameplay – we noticed the potential of injecting a number of that into this multiplayer sport. It is about having a quite simple core that’s straightforward to scale and including a number of fascinating components to it, maintaining it accessible however very fascinating on the similar time.“
Ronimo’s model of Nubs was additionally trying to enchantment to a much wider viewers, whereas the brand new studio is being extra focused; moderately than creating one thing numerous folks would possibly get pleasure from, Rangatang hopes to succeed in fewer gamers who grow to be extra devoted followers, drawing on learnings from their earlier hit.
Awesomenauts was a title De Paepe particularly For De Paepe, it was additionally an opportunity to work with a number of the of us behind a sport he admired enormously. He remembers taking part in it Awesomenauts regularly and praised its skill to distil what could be an intimidating style, the MOBA, into one thing a wider vary of individuals can play and luxuriate in. That is one thing he hopes to assist Nubs do with that sport’s chosen style.
„You’ve got extra severe brawlers, however we wish to take the aggressive fringe of that and convey it in a extra accessible, condensed bundle in order that the extra aggressive gamer can nonetheless get pleasure from it however on the similar time it is a good entry for those who can be like, ‚Oh, that appears scary to me.‘
„Lots of people take a look at League of Legends and are like, ‚What the hell is happening?‘ Awesomenauts was simpler, easier to know, however the aggressive edge was nonetheless there. That is what we wish to do with Nubs as effectively. You may really feel that competitiveness in it, it isn’t only a celebration brawl or a sport that you simply begin up a few times and then you definitely neglect about it. We would like it to be a part of what they do on a each day or weekly foundation.“
Thijssen concludes: „Awesomenauts was a multiplayer sport that was accessible and playable by a broad viewers, however they might additionally take it very severely. A part of my private perception is that even informal players, when in a aggressive setting, wish to be taken severely and the competitors must be trustworthy. You are combating for one thing and there are actual stakes, even when the setting is a little bit bit extra informal than different video games.
„Proper now, we’re extra leaning into fight and chaos. It is very in your face however gamers can take care of that. That is what we observed with Awesomenauts, in order that’s one studying that we’re attempting to use right here.“