Fan of post-apocalypse games ? Climate conscious ? Want to make indie games with us ?

Hi, My name is Mathieu. I’m the founder of Pyrocene Studio, based in Liège, Belgium. I’m looking for team mates in order to make a first game, and potentially grow to long term associates. I’m looking for people skilled with junior to intermediate experience in : o Unity gameplay programming o 3D/2D game art generalist with skills in animation who want to jump in the indie game adventure and are ready to turn it into a serious, professional and financially viable business. I’m a 2D artist with 10+ years of experience, mainly specialized in digital painting (concept art & illustration), recently trained for 6 months in game design and with beginner level C# Unity programming skills. My goal with this project is to make highly narrative games, with a first game concept set in a post-apocalypse (or rather post-collapse) setting, centered around life in Europe at the end of the century, the fate of human societies and how to survive the challenges of climate change in a post oil era. Inspirations are games like Fallout, This war of mine, The Banner Saga, The Life & Suffering of Sir Brante… I’m especially curious and motivated to evolve toward procedural, emergent narration similar to games like Wildermyth, Rimworld or Crusader Kings. (Although I’m conscious that this is a long shot, complexity-wise). Being a visual artist at heart, I would like to come up with a singular and beautiful aesthetic for this game, maybe 2D with a hand-painted feel. The game business landscape in Belgium is fast growing. It is in the process of getting structured and has public financial aides for starting studios at various stages of development. Investors are getting in the game and soon there should be a very motivating tax relief tool for investment in game ventures. I’m confident that I can secure a seed funding of up to 75K€ by early 2023, develop a VSD and next find a publisher. Right now I’m accompanied by a startup incubator specially dedicated to video game dev studios to help shape and structure the project. So if you join me now, you could be a part of this early phase. Mentored by game & startup veterans, we’ll be making low scope games at first with a production planning of 2 months, then another game in 4 months, then one last in 6. All three games will be self published on Steam, in order to get experience both as a developer and as a company (marketing-wise, communication-wise, management-wise, etc). If we form a team and you commit to working consistently until completion of one or the three game projects, we will formalize the collaboration and you will have share revenues from the sales. Depending on how things go at the end of that phase, we can go on and become partners, or we set on securing fundings and the studio hire you for a defined time. What comes after that depends on success and luck, only time will tell. I’m all open to remote work with people anywhere, as long as you have the skills and the work relation is good, based on transparency, motivation and respect. I’m also eager to welcome workmates of any culture, color, gender, on a wide spectrum. Who you are or how you define yourself are no criteria. Only your skills, work ethic and your humanity are. I used to suffer when I was younger for being different. As a grown man and an entrepreneur, I want to make my workplace a place of joy and peace, free of non respectful, toxic relationships grounded on domination patterns. If you dream like me of making highly artistic, highly narrative games that are infused with a reflection on society, ecology, and what the future might look like, all the while having fun and working towards creating a sustainable job that matters, please get in touch ! Please send your resume, or a linkedin profile and portfolio to hello@pyrocenestudio.com