Ronimo Video games, the Dutch developer behind indie hit Awesomenauts, filed for chapter in August final yr. Right this moment, 4 former members of the group – together with the CEO – return with a new studio, Rangatang.
Not solely that, the quartet is already laborious at work on Nubs, the game Ronimo by no means bought 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 group 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 really 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 cope with a famend writer whose identify I shall not point out as a result of the chapter remains to be in progress. However the game was shaping up very properly, we have been blissful, the writer was very blissful – after which lightning struck. They knowledgeable us that they have been shutting down a European department of their organisation. We needed to search for cash elsewhere to fund the remainder of the game.”
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 group managed to safe round 40 conferences on the San Francisco convention and got here near signing a new publishing deal, with one even involving the acquisition of the studio, however each fell by on the final second.
Wider strikes within the trade did not assist issues. Thijssen factors to the information from Embracer that adopted shortly after, wherein the group misplaced a vital deal of its personal and started a restructuring course of that led to a number of studio closures, gross sales, and over 1,000 layoffs. He says he noticed it as an instance of the “doom and gloom on the horizon.”
“On the larger ranges on the traders’ facet, there was loads of angst at that second and loads of traders have been wanting ahead, considering ‘Wait a minute, if these different traders are going to be falling over, there’s going to be loads 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 game in growth, we had an excellent good pitch, an especially gifted group, and loads of superior stuff, we weren’t in a position to make it occur earlier than our time was up. In some unspecified time in the future, the cash simply ran out and you need to pull the set off.”
Ronimo Video games had round 25 staff 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 group – lead programmer Maarten van den Heijkant and lead core tech programmer Machiel van Hooren – started discussing concepts for reviving the unfinished Nubs. They have been eager to have Thijssen on board for, however the CEO was centered 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 personal 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 choosing up the place they left off. Nubs was “an excellent advanced half-finished game with loads of wires protruding in every single place” with as much as 700 man hours poured into it. The new group was simply three folks – later 4 after hiring Ronimo artist Gijs Witkamp to keep up Nubs’ quirky visible model – who needed to work out tips on how to adapt the undertaking.
“Despite the fact that we had a really good game in growth, we weren’t in a position to make it earlier than our time was up. In some unspecified time in the future, the cash simply ran out and you need to pull the set off”
Olivier Thijssen, Rangatang
This primarily got here right down to chopping components of the game that “we’d by no means have the ability to full with a group of lower than 25 or 30 folks,” Thijssen says. For instance, the cartoony brawler was initially designed as a large top-down world that gamers may discover, whereas the Rangatang model of Nubs is now cut up throughout smaller arenas with extra deal with rounds-based competitors.
“We’re solely going to make use of the most effective facets of the game and see how we are able to leverage that optimally,” Thijssen explains. “That was really fairly good to do as a result of you may shortly make very giant selections.”
Nonetheless, Nubs’ destiny this time shouldn’t be solely reliant on the Rangatang quartet. The 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 game to completion.
Co-founder and technical artist Emiel Da Paepe tells GamesIndustry.biz he first realized of Thijssen and his group throughout talks with an area enterprise capital agency about potential investments.
“I bought 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 game, had a chat, and we hit it off fairly properly. In loads of facets, now we have a really related imaginative and prescient in the case of what makes a game cool. After which steadily that advanced 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 all the time 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 have 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 game however had an identical strategy of very modular gameplay – we noticed the potential of injecting loads of that into this multiplayer game. It is about having a quite simple core that’s straightforward to scale and including loads of fascinating components to it, conserving it accessible however very fascinating on the similar time.”
Ronimo’s model of Nubs was additionally making an attempt to enchantment to a wider viewers, whereas the new studio is being extra focused; slightly than creating one thing plenty of folks would possibly get pleasure from, Rangatang hopes to succeed in fewer gamers who turn into 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 among the of us behind a game he admired drastically. He remembers taking part in it Awesomenauts incessantly and praised its potential to distil what will be an intimidating style, the MOBA, into one thing a wider vary of individuals can play and revel in. That is one thing he hopes to assist Nubs do with that game’s chosen style.
“You may have extra severe brawlers, however we wish to take the aggressive fringe of that and convey it in a extra accessible, condensed package deal 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 that could be like, ‘Oh, that appears scary to me.’
“Lots of people have a look at League of Legends and are like, ‘What the hell is occurring?’ Awesomenauts was simpler, easier to know, however the aggressive edge was nonetheless there. That is what we wish to do with Nubs as properly. You possibly can really feel that competitiveness in it, it is not only a social gathering brawl or a game 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 every day or weekly foundation.”
Thijssen concludes: “Awesomenauts was a multiplayer game that was accessible and playable by a broad viewers, however they might additionally take it very significantly. A part of my private perception is that even informal avid gamers, when in a aggressive setting, wish to be taken significantly and the competitors must be trustworthy. You are combating for one thing and there are actual stakes, even when the setting is a bit of bit extra informal than different video games.
“Proper now, we’re extra leaning into fight and chaos. It’s extremely in your face however gamers can cope with that. That is what we seen with Awesomenauts, in order that’s one studying that we’re attempting to use right here.”