Irish indie game bundle

Five Irish games are up for grabs on Towerbundle.com this week with fifty per cent of the profits going to the charity, Concern Worldwide.

The Irish Week bundle includes platformer Goldbeard, recent Steam release Ku: Shourd of the Morrigan, brawler mini-game Battle of Clontarf, Batcat Games excellent twin-stick shooter P-3 Biotic, and iOS platformer Jellyflug.

You'll get codes for Steam, Desura and the App Store while Battle of Clontarf is a direct download link.

Keep an eye out for video of some of these games on Hackett Out soon.

bitSmith release new FranknJohn footage

Some of the team from Dublin-based indie studio bitSmith are at GDC in San Francisco this week - but that hasn't stopped them pushing out a trailer showing early pre-alpha footage of their upcoming game FranknJohn.

The top-down, rouge-like-like brawler should be getting a Kickstarter soon, but in the meantime you can take a quick look at the gameplay and some of the environments that you can look forward to in the final game.



In a statement via their newsletter today the developers said they'll be streaming sections of the game on their Twitch channel.

Games Fleadh 2014 video round-up

Games Fleadh 2014 took place at LIT Thurles in County Tipperary on Wednesday. This year's event wasn't without it's problems as it conincided this year with GDC which runs over the weekend.

 Many of the Irish development teams who were expected to speak couldn't make it as they prepared to fly to San Francisco.

 The annual Games Fleadh awards, in conjunction with Engineers Ireland, was posponed as a result but the student competition and industry talks went ahead as planned. And some of what was on offer was impressive.

Last year's Game Studio Ireland Challenge College Cup Champions Joseph Bentley & Ger Stone, or Alt Tab, won this year's Imagine Cup in Dublin last week. They were on site to show off their game CavernNauts. Other established developers like Exgamers Studio, with Source Control, and Atom Split Games with The Power Game were on site.

 Here's what else I saw on my travels.

Games Fleadh 2014

 

Kú goes live on Steam this St. Patrick's Day

Bit Smith Games today announced that Kú: Shroud of the Morrigan will be released on Steam on 17 March.

Kú is a top-down 2D game with action-rpg elements. Bit Smith released the game on iPad last year but now, after a protracted Steam Greenlight campaign, it's finally getting a full re-release for PC.

Versions of the game are already available on the developer's website for Android, PC and Mac.

The game is a twist on the Táin, the story of Cúchulainn, set in a future Ireland.

In a statement on their Steam page today the developers said: "What better way to celebrate St. Patricks [sic] Day than to consume yourself in some ancient Irish history."

Kú was not without its problems on iPad - but a lot of my frustrations came from the controls. The game has full controller support on PC. There's no detail on pricing yet but I'll keep you informed.

Video game start-ups shine at Enterprise Ireland event

Dublin Castle CC via [Dicky]

Ten Irish games companies were among the 103 businesses showcased by Enterprise Ireland this morning at Dublin Castle. Speaking on Morning Ireland, Enterprise Ireland's Chief Executive Julie Sinnamon said that there was a really high callibre of companies to showcase.

Enterprise Ireland is the government body tasked with developing Irish industries for international markets. The High Potential Start-Up Class of 2013 event is used by Enterprise Ireland to introduce companies that it has supported during the previous year.

Ms Sinnamon told RTE that technology companies were leading the pack over the past year.

"The biggest sector of all was really the technology, software, internet, games area... really dynamic, young companies and very enthusiastic and full of energy."

She said these companies were driven by really big ambitions.

The full report released by Enterprise Ireland divides the companies into two groups - 'High Potential Start-ups' that have sucessfully raised seed capital and 'Competetive Start-ups' or early stage companies. 

The list of games-specific companies includes Simteractive, a developer headed up by Elaine Reynolds, formerly of Lionhead and Sixminute - a team formed from the ashes of PopCap's Dublin office.

Here's a list of the games companies involved:

High Potential Start-ups
Gamesparks
Sixminute

Competitive Start-ups
Beat Your Manager
English Bubble
Hail Studios
Rainbow Rocket Studios
Sighter
Simteractive
Powwow
Thoughtbox

Irish indie devs on twitter

Ireland's independent videogame scene is a fast-growing creative industry, full of interesting people and new ideas. You can follow along with the latest news, or join the conversation, with the new Hackett Out 'IndieIRL' list on twitter.

If you have any questions or want to get added to the list you can get in touch with me @padrg.

I'll be posting a permanent link to the list on the navigation pane on the top-right hand side of this site. For now, here's the latest from Ireland's established and up and coming game developers:


Tweets from https://twitter.com/padrg/indieirl